The Turkmenistan deal, agreed last week between the EU's External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner and Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, is part of a wider EU 'outreach' strategy to Central Asia and the Caspian region, home to some of the world's largest known reserves of natural gas (EurActiv 11/04/08).
With Europe's dependence on (mostly Russian) natural gas imports expected to reach 85% by 2030, the EU has been anxious to diversify its natural gas supply sources.
Turkmenistan's guarantee of 10bn cubic metres annually is "not a vast quantity" compared with the EU's total yearly gas needs of approximately 500bn cubic metres, but it is still a "very important first step," Ferrero-Waldner told the Financial Times.
Details of how the Turkmen gas will be brought to EU markets still remain foggy, however.
The EU hopes to transport the gas across the Caspian via a new mini-pipeline and to feed it into the bloc's flagship Nabucco pipeline, which runs through Turkey directly into the EU, bypassing Russian territory (EurActiv LinksDossier).
But there is opposition to the plans from other Caspian states and from Russia, an influential player in the region, which has secured its own supply contracts with Turkmenistan (EurActiv 14/05/07).
A separate 'political agreement' for Iraqi gas could also be agreed this week as part of an official visit by the country's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. While no supply quantities or specific guarantees are foreseen, the EU is keen to secure a supply of Iraqi gas for Nabucco.
