The annual Oil and Gas Turkmenistan (OGT) Conference wrapped up November 17, with less people in attendance this year (500) by contrast with last year (700), from energy companies and governments. No major announcements were made, although in one new development, Turkmen ministers indicated they would like foreign help with the building of the East-West pipeline -- a project they had said they could handle themselves two years ago. Turkmen energy officials emphasized yet again how large Turkmenistan's reserves were (estimates have been revised upwards to 71.21 billion tons of fuel), and how the revision of the deposit at South Yolotan to 26.2 billion cubic meters (bcm) would place the gas fields in Turkmenistan as the world's second largest, rather than fourth or fifth. Officials reiterated that Ashgabat intends to diversify its delivery routes, but ultimately indicated they would sell gas at the border, i.e. let foreign partners concern themselves about further pipelines.
During the OGT, Turkmen officials also signalled that they would consider Russian involvement in the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline – a departure from the apparent negative position last year when Ashgabat was furious at Moscow’s presumption that Gazprom could participate. Yet following a positive meeting between Bayramgeldy Nedirov, Turkmenistan's minister of oil and gas industry and Russian Deputy Energy Minister Yuri Sentyurin, the next day Gazprom’s Alexei Medvedev blasted Turkmenistan on Russian television, saying it was exaggerating its gas reserves and minimizing the difficulty in extracting them – inciting another round of furious denunciations from Ashgabat.
By contrast with its setbacks with Russia and dragging on closure of a deal with the EU, Turkmen ministers indicated at the OGT that amounts of gas delivered to China could increase to 40 bcm on the eve of President Berdymukhamedov’s departure to Beijing November 22. This amount is now being reported as 65 bcm, more than double the original plan when the pipeline began construction in 2009.
Ashgabat is feeling flush with what it says are findings of much larger gas deposits, and says it has enough for all customers. Not only is Russia skeptical; the deals even with the very solicitous EU haven’t quite been concluded, and it’s not clear whether the political difficulties surrounding the building of the Trans Caspian Pipeline (TCP) will be surmounted and whether the EU will invest in Turkmenistan’s infrastructure as China has done.
Some observers noticed that in the state and foreign media coverage of OGT, Yagshigeldy Kakaev, chairman of the Presidential State Agency for Management and Use of Hydrocarbon Resources, was not mentioned. He was listed on the program as the keynote speaker, and participants report that he indeed did speak, but the press didn't feature him. Every other ministry related to energy was present at the expo, but the one agency actually endowed with decision-making power under the president's personal control, wasn't noted. Baymyrat Hojamukhammedov, deputy chairman of the cabinet of ministers responsible for the oil and gas sector, was assigned by the president to meet with foreign gas and oil company executives.
Pierre Morel, the EU's special representative to Central Asia, met with President Berdymukhamedov and held a televised news conference, where he said that for the first time in history, the EU was mandated to conclude a tripartite energy agreement with Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Daniel Stein, senior adviser to the US State Department's office of the special envoy for Eurasian energy, said the US had supported the Trans Caspian Pipeline (TCP) for 15 years and would continue to support Turkmenistan in finding new routes to market for its oil and gas. In defiance of Russia's claims to the contrary, Stein said that no country "could have a veto" on the TCP or place obstacles in its path.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle attended the OGT in a major show of support for Turkmenistan from the European Union. He met with President Berdymukhamedov to discuss pipelines and other cooperative projects and plans for the December 2 meeting in Bonn to discuss Afghanistan and the involvement of its neighbors in post-conflict assistance. By contrast with US and other European leaders who have visited the Turkmen leader, Westerwell told reporters forthrightly that he had raised human rights concerns, and attended a seminar on human rights organized by the Presidential Institute for Democracy and Human Rights.
Touring lavish marble palaces and parks studded with fountains, Foreign Minister Westerwelle remarked, "“Ashgabat is a wonderful, magnificent and very neat city that certainly impresses the Germans. It appears that we share an approach to life," the State News Agency of Turkmenistan (TDH) reported him as saying.
Germany's largest daily Suddeutsche Zeitung was less than impressed, tartly calling Westerwelle's visit a "trip to another galaxy," and describing the ostentatious marble architecture in Ashgabat as "a gleaming mixture of Stalin and kitsch,” The human rights seminar was with a state-controlled entity, said the daily, under yet another portrait of President Berdymukhamedov. To top it off, no gas has been delivered to Europe yet, said the paper.
While the German Federal Foreign Office website reported human rights in Turkmenistan as “improved,” the evidence seemed slight – mainly involving cooperation with various bodies such as the offices of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights or UN High Commission for Refugees. Meanwhile, human rights groups continue to record ongoing violations of human rights. On November 11, vandals threw rocks into the home of Annamamed Myatiev, a former correspondent for the state-run newspaper Neitral'niy Turkmenistan breaking a window and a mirror in his bedroom. Forum 18 News Service and Human Rights Watch have reported, there are at least 11 religious believers in Turkmenistan's Seydi labor camp in the Lebap region; pictures of the desert labor camp recently made available provide a stark contrast with the seminar on penitentiary reform organized last week with Turkmen officials by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
One glimmer of hope despite other bleak news in the human rights field is the emergence of a public legal aid sector increasingly being used by citizens to get justice. Berdymukhamedov has encouraged the opening of public aid centers, still inadequate given the demand, which in some cases usually involving housing, are giving citizens some remedy. Now lawsuits challenging the state’s heavy control over media, information, and associations are attempted, however.
Catherine A. Fitzpatrick compiles the Turkmenistan weekly roundup for EurasiaNet. She is also editor of EurasiaNet's Sifting the Karakum blog.
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