GERMAN PROJECT IN TURKMENISTAN TO INCREASE GAS EXPORT.

On February 13 in Ashgabat, the Turkmen government and the German companies Siemens and Mannesmann signed an agreement to build a large-scale compressor station for the Korpeje-Kurt Kui gas pipeline to Iran. The station will boost the pipeline’s annual export capacity by 2 billion cubic meters. Operational since last year, Korpeje-Kurt Kui is the first and thus far only pipeline out of Turkmenistan to circumvent the Russian stranglehold on Turkmen gas exports.

The compressor station is designed to handle the valuable associated gas [a byproduct of oil extraction] which has thus far been released into the atmosphere at three Turkmen oilfields near Korpeje. The German companies will finance the project under a three-cornered arrangement. Iran will reimburse the German credits with oil deliveries to the German companies at Persian Gulf terminals. Tehran will then in turn be reimbursed by Turkmenistan through a gas quota, to be deducted from the Turkmen gas exports to Iran (Russian agencies, February 13).

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