Ashgabat Media Forum raised awareness of the Energy Charter activity

Ashgabat hosted the International Media Forum, dedicated to the 28th session of the Energy Charter Conference. 

The meeting gathered representatives of UN Economic Commission for Europe, Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the OSCE, OEC, international information agencies and television and radio broadcasting companies and authoritative structures of Austria, Azerbaijan, Albania, Armenia, Afghanistan, Belarus, Georgia, India, Yemen, Kazakhstan, China, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Russia, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Switzerland, Japan and other countries. On the Turkmen part, the heads and experts of ministries, national mass media participated in the forum. 
 

The media forum aims to raise awareness of the Energy Charter activity, a high level of organization of activities in Turkmenistan in the framework of the country’s presidency in the Energy Charter in 2017. 

Forum participants, in particular, Minister of Energy and Water Resources of Afghanistan Ali Ahmad Osmani, Deputy Chairman of the Energy Charter’s implementation group, representative of Kazakhstan Klara Rakhmetova, Deputy Energy Minister of Georgia Ilia Eloshvili, Deputy Energy and Industry Minister of Albania Ilir Bata and others, noted in their speeches the importance of the tasks, put on an agenda of the Ashgabat forum of the Energy Charter. 

As noted, taking into account that natural gas is the most environmentally clean product among all the hydrocarbon resources, its market share of primary energy consumption will increase. However, as it was emphasized there are a number of difficulties in the transportation of “blue fuel” from producer to consumer, and pipeline supply was designated in a number of the most effective and safe ways. It was noted the importance of problem solution of ensuring the safe transit, and a global community’s development of new mechanisms to achieve the goals. 

It was stated the relevance, developed by Turkmenistan’s initiatives on guarantees of reliability and security of energy supplies to world markets. A clear proof of this is two cognominal Resolutions “Reliable and stable transit of energy and its role in ensuring sustainable development and international cooperation”, adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly in 2008 and 2013 on the proposal of Turkmenistan. 
 

Special attention was paid to the importance of the Energy Charter Treaty, which is the only multilateral agreement to address complex political, economic and legal problems, associated with energy transit. 

The basic principles of the abovementioned international structure are almost in full in accordance with the position of Turkmenistan. Here, the cornerstone is the creation of a new international legal mechanism, aimed at ensuring reliable and stable energy supplies to world markets. 

Turkmenistan ranks fourth in the world in proven natural gas reserves, the country’s strategic priority is the diversification of transport infrastructure, being capable of delivering energy to consumers by creating an extensive network of multi-variant pipeline system. The Turkmen side strives for contribution to global sustainable development by ensuring stable and reliable supplies to consumers of the most environmentally clean raw hydrocarbon deposits. 

Turkmenistan is the largest natural gas supplier to China via the transnational gas pipeline length of more than 9 thousand kilometers. To this day, three branches of this pipeline operate, allowing the country to export annually to China to 40 billion cubic meters of natural gas. It is also planned to build a fourth branch to increase capacity of this pipeline up to 65 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. 
 

Due to its favorable geopolitical position and the richest deposits of hydrocarbons, Turkmenistan has the potential to increase the export volumes of gas to various destinations, including European and Asian markets. Speaking about the future directions of the national strategy in this field, the speakers notified that the energy markets of China and Iran would remain the main sales markets of production of oil and gas complex. However, the share of Eastern (Afghanistan, Pakistan, India) and European destinations in total exports of the Turkmen fuel and energy resources is also taken into consideration when developing the long-term development of the complex. 

It was emphasized that in the case of the application of fundamental principles of the Energy Charter Treaty, and reaching the definite agreements with the transit countries, the CAC system of main gas pipelines could potentially be used to deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to the countries of Eastern Europe and the CIS. 

Among top priority projects, implemented at the present time, it has been called the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India gas pipeline with a total length of 1,814 km and a design capacity of 33 billion cubic meters of gas per year. 

One of the topics, covered in the presentations, was the environmental component of the national strategy in this field. Supporting the world community’s efforts for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Turkmenistan moves towards using modern resource-saving technologies mainly in oil and gas, energy and transport sectors, that is the aim of the “National Strategy on Climate Change”. 
 

Among the priority directions of Turkmenistan’s energy policy development were designated the increase of electricity generation and its export, improvement of the energy supply quality, construction of energy-intensive industries. In the framework of the Development Concept of the electric power industry for 2013-2020, several gas turbine power plants have been already built. 

Measures taken in this area enable Turkmenistan to fully provide itself with electricity and to export it to neighboring countries – Afghanistan and Iran. There are also all opportunities for the expansion of electricity supply to countries of the Central Asian region. 

Among the issues, considered in the course of the meeting, is the Multilateral Framework Agreement on energy transit. It was emphasized that the main objective of the proposed instrument is to achieve a balance between the interests of states exporters/importers and the transit countries. It was noted the requirement for further discussion of the development of an effective mechanism that would encompass all the energy for the unification of the rules for transit. 

At the end of the media forum, the participants emphasized that the Energy Charter could and should play one of leading roles in consolidating efforts to create effective, equitable, balanced model of mutual relations in the global energy space, become the leader and conductor of innovative ideas and approaches. Turkmenistan will render the necessary assistance to it.