There is trouble in Turkmenistan. Revelations that reports on natural gas reserves in the former Soviet republic were overstated could reawaken concerns about Ashgabat’s ability to meet all its ambitious export promises. Furthermore...as if it wasn’t bad enough, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov fired almost all the country’s top oil and gas officials on 13 October in a humiliating televised scolding, citing their “irresponsible approach” and accusing them of unspecified deficiencies and negligence.
Experts have been wondering that for years - can Turkmenistan meet its promises or not? “That has always been an open question – could they meet their commitments, even to Rus­sia for that matter,” Ron Smith, chief strategist at Mos­cow‘s Alfa Bank,  told New Europe on 15 October, add­ing that Turkmenistan has remained closed to the outside world.
Taking advantage of a rare opportunity, UK energy consulting company Gaffney, Cline and Associates (GCA) in October 2008 announced the results of its audit of the gas reserves of the South Yolotan/Osman and Yashlar fields in Turkmenistan. The report stated that the South Yolotan/Osman gas field holds at least 4-6 trillion cubic metres of natural gas and could hold as much as 14 trillion cubic metres of gas. In October 2009, various unnamed sources suggested that the results may have been unreliable due to the absence of sufficient data and/or to the use of previous interpretations provided by Turkmen specialists. Manager Jim Gillett e-mailed New Europe a statement responding to these allegations, saying that GCA’s estimate was based on original data provided by Turkmen state concern Turkmengeologiya. The statement added that GCA’s audit results were the product of GCA’s original work on the base data provided to GCA, and not dependent upon any previous interpretation made by Turkmen or other international experts.
Turkmenistan has spread its promises of its gas reserves around – the EU, China, Russia and Iran - partly because their transport situation is undefined right now. “They are strategically spreading it around and trying to see which transit option is going to come first,” Smith said, pointing to Ashgabat’s tense relations with Moscow.
The EU wants to secure Turkmen gas supplies for its Nabucco pipeline. But Brussels’ efforts hinge on the creation of a trans-Caspian pipeline that would feed into Nabucco. However, at this point in time, Turkmen gas is not absolutely essential for the implementation of the Nabucco project, the European Commission said. “We’re completely sure that the gas reserves in the whole region – Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and maybe, if the situation improves, Iran - are huge. The case for Nabucco is completely justified even if the volumes of gas that people expected to find in Turkmenistan are a little bit smaller or much smaller,” Ferran Tarradellas Espuny, energy spokesman for Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, told New Europe on 16 October. “The gas we need is the gas of Azerbaijan and we know that there is plenty of gas,” he said.
But Russia may have beaten them to the punch.  Alexey Miller, chairman of the Gazprom’s management committee, who recently led a delegation to Azerbaijan, said Gazprom will import 500 million cubic metres of Azeri gas starting in January 2010 under a contract signed with State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR). “Gazprom by signing this deal with Azerbaijan for the Shah Deniz gas, has put Nabucco under a bigger question mark than it already was. So it may well be that the European option will never really materialize,” Smith said. “It’s more likely that Turkmen gas is going to end up going mostly to China for now”.
 

 KGeropoulos@NEurope.eu