Russian companies to bid for Turkmen gas-pipeline

19.04.2010 (12:18)

Russian contractors have submitted bids for the $2-4 billion East-West gas pipeline construction tender in Turkmenistan, said Gennady Skidanov, First Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of ITERA Oil and Gas Company.

He said 28 bids had been submitted. Although Chinese, Ukrainian and Western companies will also bid in the tender, Ashgabat has not yet selected the pipeline route, Reuters said.

The 800-1,000-km East-West gas pipeline, already in the planning stages for many years, is to link eastern Turkmen gas deposits, including the country's largest, the South Iolotan gas field, with the Caspian coast.

Although there were plans to link the pipeline with the Caspian Gas Pipeline, considered important by Moscow, Russian energy giant Gazprom sharply curtailed Turkmen-gas purchases in early 2009 due to the global economic crisis, depriving Ashgabat of its main revenues.

At that time, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov said he was interested in supporting the rival Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, due to be built on the Caspian seabed and to link up with the Nabucco pipeline in Turkey. This Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline can be approached now by the East-West gas pipeline. However, an international tender for building the East-West gas pipeline was called.

Gennady Isakharov, CEO of the state-owned Krasnodarstroitransgaz pipeline-construction company bidding together with ITERA, said it was now up to Turkmenistan to decide whether the East-West pipeline should link up with the Caspian or Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline.

The deadline for announcing the tender's results has not been set. Isakharov hopes that the tender will take place, that the project will be divided into three or four lots, and that a 200-250-km section will be assigned to the ITERA-Krasnodarstroitransgaz consortium. China and probably Gazprom are also expected to win, he said.

A Gazprom spokesperson declined to say whether the company had submitted its bid, but added that it continued to negotiate project-implementation terms. It appears that Russian companies have good chances because the East-West pipeline will primarily pump additional gas to Russia via the Caspian Gas Pipeline, a spokesperson for Turkmenistan's government told Reuters on Thursday.

www.en.rian.ru