TURKMENISTAN: TAKING ITS TIME TO OPEN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ASHGABAT 000684 SIPDIS STATE FOR SCA/CEN, EEB PLEASE PASS TO USTDA DAN STEIN USEU FOR SPECIAL ENVOY GRAY ENERGY FOR EKIMOFF/THOMPSON COMMERCE FOR HUEPER E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/30/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL EPET TX SUBJECT: TURKMENISTAN: TAKING ITS TIME TO OPEN HYDROCARBON PRODUCTION TO NEW COMERS Classified By: CDA Richard E. Hoagland: 1.4(B) and (D). ¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: Although the Government of Turkmenistan up to now has pursued a policy of banning foreign companies from its gas fields onshore (foreign companies are working the Caspian oilfields),Turkmenistan may be reconsidering this policy. At the heart of this new thinking is a need to increase production to fund the president's ambitious program of public construction, rural development, and healthcare and education reform. While Turkmenistan continues to have world-class hydrocarbon reserves, its infrastructure has been deteriorating for years, and the easy-to-reach gas fields are playing out. Turkmenistan's state-owned hydrocarbon firms do not have the expertise, technology, or financial resources needed to maintain production at current levels, far less to increase the country's production to meet Turkmenistan's growing number of export commitments. Providing officials with the information they need to make informed decisions could help increase their confidence in dealing with the West in general, and with Western firms in particular. END SUMMARY. ¶2. (SBU) A hydrocarbon-rich state that shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran, Turkmenistan is in the midst of an historic political transition. Western analysts believe that Turkmenistan's official estimate of its gas reserves -- 75 trillion cubic meters -- is exaggerated, but there is no disagreement that Turkmenistan has world-class natural gas reserves and smaller, but still significant, oil reserves. The bulk of its gas is located in the Amu Darya basin, in the country's east, while most oil is located in the Caspian basin to the west. With a population of about 5 million, Turkmenistan's economy is predominantly gas-based, and the state sector accounts for more than 75% of its economic activity. INCREASING EXPORT COMMITMENTS MANDATE INCREASED PRODUCTION ¶3. (SBU) Former President Niyazov inherited at indpendence a pipeline structure in which all of Turkmenistan's oil and gas pipelines ran northward, to Russia. Turkmenistan necessarily maintained its Russia-centric export focus, and it did so with a quirky policy of selling hydrocarbons at the border. In the 15 years following Turkmenistan's independence, the government flirted with the idea of creating alternate export pipelines, including through Afghanistan to South Asia, to Iran, and across the Caspian to Azerbaijan. Except for a small pipeline to Iran (with a maximum capacity of 13-14 bcm per year),none of these plans came to fruition, leaving Turkmenistan overly dependent on its exports to Russia. As a result, Turkmenistan for years received from Gazprom only $40 per thousand cubic meters (tcm) of natural gas from Gazprom, even as Gazprom was charging European countries $253 per tcm for gas. Given Niyazov's massive looting of Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon revenue, little money was left over for in-country infrastructure renovation and development. Although Niyazov in September 2006 successfully forced Gazprom to increase its payments to $100 per tcm, current President Berdimuhamedov is relying on both that increased hydrocarbon revenue and planned production/export increases to fund his on-going construction program, rural development, and ambitious improvements to the healthcare and education sectors. ¶4. (SBU) With those needs in mind and recognizing as well that pipeline diversification strengthens Turkmenistan's sovereignty, Berdimuhamedov is actively seeking to expand ASHGABAT 00000684 002 OF 004 Turkmenistan's export commitments. In July 2007, he signed an agreement with China to export 30 bcm of gas per year for the next 30 years after a new pipeline to China is completed in 2009. Berdimuhamedov has also publicly raised the possibility of resurrecting plans for Trans-Caspian and Trans-Afghanistan pipelines that would avoid the Russian routes, but concurrently he took the first steps needed to increase the volume of gas exports to Russia -- signing a contract in December 2007 to rebuild the now-non-operating Caspian littoral pipeline and to increase its volume from 10 to 20 bcm per year, as well as refurbishing the inland Central Asia-Center I, II and IV pipelines. The result: Turkmenistan's production now must not only continue to meet existing commitments of approximately 75 bcm (i.e., 50 bcm to Russia, 8 bcm to Iran, and approximately 17 bcm for domestic consumption),but also must grow to make possible these increased exports. FOREIGN COMPANIES WELCOME TO WORK OFFSHORE FIELDS ¶5. (SBU) The Government of Turkmenistan has long recognized the difficulties of working offshore in the Caspian blocks, and has welcomed foreign companies to work its fields there. The Emirates' Dragon Oil, Malaysian-owned Petronas, and German-owned Wintershall all work offshore, while UK/Italian Burren/Eni and Austrian Mitro work onshore oil fields in western Turkmenistan under PSAs dating from before 2000. Whereas the government at first may have needed these firms' technical expertise and resources to work the oil, the foreign firms, operating under agreements based on a model PSA contained in the 1997 Petroleum Law, have become much more efficient at working oil than Turkmenneft, Turkmenistan's clunky state-owned oil company. (One expert has suggested that it takes Turkmenneft 18 months to do what it takes the foreign companies, collectively, six months to do.) Most of these firms have profited under the terms of their PSAs and many other foreign oil firms are bidding for offshore PSAs. More than 14 months after its establishment, however, the State Agency for Management and Use of Hydrocarbon Resources -- the body responsible for liaison with foreign oil companies -- has signed only two agreements with foreign firms: a deal which allows the China National Petroleum Corporation to work on the right bank of the Amu Darya River and a separate arrangement with the Canadian/Omani firm Buried Hill to work fields in the disputed (offshore) Serdar block. A new draft of the Petroleum Law that is currently under discussion will probably allow a broader range of agreement types, but may also seek to force companies now negotiating future PSAs for offshore blocks to accept new requirements that the government sees as being more beneficial to itself. THE KNOWN ONSHORE FIELDS ARE PLAYING OUT ¶6. (C) By comparison, the focus in the eastern gas fields, including during the Soviet era, has been on extracting hydrocarbons in already-explored large fields known to be gas-rich, such as Dovletabad. Up to now, the Government of Turkmenistan has sought to work its gas reserves through its own government-owned company, Turkmengaz. When necessary, this company has contracted with U.S. or other western firms, but only through service contracts with limited terms and scope. While Turkmenistan agreed shortly after its independence in 1991 to allow the Argentinian company, Bridas, to work a gas field in what is now Yoloten under a joint venture -- under terms highly advantageous to Bridas -- this deal fell apart a few years later when Niyazov demanded ASHGABAT 00000684 003 OF 004 to renegotiate the PSA and Bridas refused, leading to government confiscation of Bridas' property in Turkmenistan and an acrimonious, drawn-out (and still unresolved) international arbitration process that Turkmenistani officials continue to cite as the rationale for not allowing foreign companies access to the gas fields. ¶7. (SBU) However, the years of minimal government investment into renovating and upgrading Turkmenistan's crumbling hydrocarbon infrastructure have led to a gradual decline in production. Moreover, most of the reserves in the upper (Cretaceous) layer in these existing fields -- the gas that has been easiest to extract -- are beginning to play out. Although wWstern analysts believe that there remain extensive reserves in the Jurassic layer and in previously unexplored fields, most also state that the challenges of working these new reserves are beyond the capabilities of Turkmenistan's expertise, technology, and financial resources. A thick salt sheet separates the two layers, and much of the Jurassic-layer gas is believed to be ultra-high pressure and to have a high sulphur content, requiring construction of gas-treatment plants. NEW CHALLENGES, NEED FOR INCREASED PRODUCTION PROMOTE NEW THINKING ¶8. (C) One of the biggest challenges that Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon sector will have to face, if the country is to succeed in pipeline diversification, is the need for increased natural-gas production. Turkmenistan produced a reported 72.3 bcm of natural gas in 2007 -- a figure that barely met its existing domestic needs and production. The president directed that production should increase to 81.5 bcm in 2008, but the Deputy Prime Minister for Oil and Gas, Tachberdi Tagiyev, was publicly reprimanded at one recent cabinet meeting for falling behind production. Even larger increases will be needed as/if new pipelines come online. Most agree that, even though Tagiyev and other older technocratic holdouts from the Soviet era continue to promote a "we-can-do-it-ourselves" policy officially, Turkmenistan needs to explore partnerships with foreign firms. Supporting this line of thinking, a Turkmenistan technical team recently told Chevron that Turkmengaz has drilled only 20 wells through the salt. However, government firms have since plugged all the wells, probably because they lack the capability and resources to safely extract and treat the gas. The upshot of this information is that Turkmenistan is currently extracting gas only above the salt, rather than below, where the majority of Turkmenistan's remaining natural gas reserves are located. One western expert recently suggested that costs associated with increasing production (including sub-salt) on a level that would allow Turkmenistan to meet its growing export commitments could run as high as $100 billion over the next five years. ¶9. (C) These factors reportedly are leading at least some of Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon officials to reconsider the previous ban on allowing foreigners to lease on-shore fields. Turkmenistan already has signed a PSA allowing the China National Petroleum Corporation to work an area on the right bank of the Amu Darya River. Hoping to exploit an area of need, Chevron has bid to work sub-salt fields in the Amu Darya basin. If Turkmenistan allows foreign firms into the Amu Darya basin, the policy of selling gas at the border -- the government's solution for minimizing foreign influence in the gas fields -- could also eventually change. ASHGABAT 00000684 004 OF 004 ¶10. (C) COMMENT: All here agree that the logjam -- probably a combination of a lack of information and a reluctance on the president's part to chart a new course and sheer obstinance on Tagiyev's part -- will clear eventually. But until that time, continued U.S. encouragement will be needed at the highest levels to help the officials here see their way through the real and false obstacles to a solution that will benefit all. END COMMENT. HOAGLAND