ASHGABAT: An article published on the website of Turkmenistan’s oil and gas ministry on Monday attacked Russia’s energy giant Gazprom, calling the company an unreliable partner for the reclusive Central Asian state.

The article by the state-run Turkmen Institute of Oil and Gas comes shortly after Gazprom’s announcement it would be cutting gas imports from the secretive republic by nearly two-thirds, and Turkmenistan’s 19 per cent devaluation at the New Year of its national currency, the manat.

“Gazprom and its affiliates periodically violate agreements at interstate, intergovernmental and interdepartmental level, leading to the view that unfortunately the major energy company is an unstable partner,” the article stated.

Gazprom’s vice chairman Alexander Medvedev said this month that the decision to reduce imports from Turkmenistan and neighbouring Uzbekistan in 2015 was based on the company’s own growing production capacity. Since a mysterious pipeline explosion in 2009, Russia has imported roughly 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas from Turkmenistan annually, but this figure will now drop to 4bcm, Medvedev said.

Before the explosion, which some industry experts credited to a dispute over prices, Gazprom imported as much as 45bcm from Turkmenistan annually, most of which was re-exported at a profit to Europe via Ukraine.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2015

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