Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych yesterday said his country wants to restore full-scale cooperation with energy-rich Turkmenistan as Kiev seeks to diversify supplies away from its Soviet-era master amid a new row.
“Ukraine is interested in restoring full cooperation with Turkmenistan in the oil and gas sector,” Mr Yanukovych told reporters on a visit to the Turkmen capital Ashgabat.
He did not provide any details but said that Ukraine intended to work on “concrete projects” with Turkmenistan and gas transit countries in the region.
Energy Minister Yury Boiko added: “We looked at how diversified the gas supplies from Turkmenistan are and are confident that we could find a common interest in that diversification.”
Ukraine used to receive gas supplies from Turkmenistan in the past but gas cooperation ended at the expiration of a contract in 2006.
With a delegation of ministers and business leaders in tow, Mr Yanukovych yesterday arrived in energy-rich, mostly-desert Turkmenistan in an effort to resume energy cooperation as Kiev is locked in a bitter energy dispute with Moscow.
Ukraine is seeking a revision to accords with Russia signed by the previous Ukrainian government to obtain lower prices for its gas imports from Russia’s gas giant Gazprom. Mr Yanukovych has said that Kiev is overpaying by $5-6 billion annually.
Moscow said Ukraine could only get a better price if it joins a Kremlin-led customs union and offers a number of other concessions.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said last week Kiev was interested in resuming gas supplies from Turkmenistan both via traditional routes and through the construction of a Caspian-Black Sea gas pipeline.
Analysts say however that even if the two countries are to strike a deal any time soon, energy supplies would still have to go through Russia to reach Ukraine.
“If there’s no compromise between Kiev and Moscow, all Ukraine’s negotiations with Turkmenistan will be fruitless”, Dmytro Marunich, director of the Kiev Institute for Energy Studies, said.
An ex-Soviet nation of 5.4 million people, bordering Afghanistan and Iran, Turkmenistan sits on top of the world’s second largest gas field known as South-Iolotan Osman.
Turkmenistan plans to triple gas production to 230 billion cubic metres in the next two decades. It also predicts a more than sixfold increase in oil output, to 67 million tonnes per year.