Armenia, Turkmenistan negotiate major gas deal

Armenia and Turkmenistan are conducting negotiations around a gas deal.

A senior Armenian official said Wednesday that the deal, which would involve buying natural gas from Turkmengaz state concern, would feature supplying gas to Armenia through Iran.

Artashes Tumanyan, the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s advisor, said at the Armenia-Turkmenistan Intergovernmental Commission for Economic Cooperation meeting that negotiations on energy cooperation have been taking place for the past several years.

He said Armenia wants to prepare a deal to buy natural gas from Turkmengaz. The gas would be supplied via Iran under a Swap system up to the border with Armenia.

“The Armenian side expressed desire to prepare a deal for purchasing natural gas from the Turkmengaz state concern, regarding which negotiations consisting of several phases were held. During the talks the Armenian side’s expectations and views were presented and all technical criteria of the project were discussed. The essence of the project is as follows, to make purchase from Turkmengaz, organize its exchange by a swap mode through Iran’s territory and bring it to the Iran-Armenia border,” Tumanyan said.

Iran has agreed to the project, he said.

The quantity would be from 600 million up to 1 billion cubic meters of gas. “But I have to note that so far the work on agreeing upon the price of the gas for this important deal hasn’t been completed and negotiations continue,” Tumanyan said.

The negotiations also touched upon the possibility of exporting Turkmen gas via Armenia to Georgia by a Swap system. Georgia has agreed, Tumanyan said.

“In the event of realizing this idea there will be an opportunity to make Turkmen gas accessible for countries of the Black Sea basin,” he said. Tumanyan added that the second direction in the talks pertains to buying and supplying various petroleum products of Turkmenistan to Armenia and perhaps other countries. “The ball is in our court here. We must provide information and advisory support to Armenian stakeholder companies so that they are able to conduct activities in the Turkmen business environment,” Tumanyan said.