Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

Turkmenistan has inaugurated a gas compressor station at the Keimyr field in the Balkan region.

The Turkmennebit station's natural gas will enter the Turkmenistan-Iran gas pipeline.

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhsmedov sent a message to the participants of the inauguration ceremony.

It was mentioned in the message that the gas compressor station is designed to pump around one billion cubic meters of natural gas to the gas gathering station at the Keimyr field which will then enter the Turkmenistan-Iran gas pipeline.

"This facility will allow gathering the associated gas from oil in one place," Berdymukhamedov said.

Currently, Turkmennebit conducts work on industrial exploration of fields, located on ground and development of North Goturdepe field on the coast of the Caspian Sea.

The prospective directions include work on arrangement of new fields, in particular Chekishler, Garadurun, South Gamyshlyja and Nebitlije store fields, located in Turkmenistan's western part.

"The priority of Turkmenistan's energy strategy is to diversify the routes of energy resources and ensuring its security. This creates big opportunities to carry out geological-exploration work in the oil and gas fields and industrial processing of hydrocarbons," the message said.

Earlier it was reported that the project is being implemented by Global International Engineering.

Delivery of Turkmen gas to Iran started after inauguration of Korpeje-Gurtguyi gas pipeline in 1995. The two neighboring countries opened additional capacities on the Dovletabad-Serakhs route in 2009.

Tehran and Ashgabat said earlier that they are negotiating to increase the volume of Turkmen gas exports to Iran.

Iran and Turkmenistan have common land borders and share the Caspian shores. Neighbouring countries have jointly built two common gas pipelines, power lines, border dam and other facilities.

Turkmenistan has been transferring natural gas to the northern provinces of Iran since 1995.

Turkmenistan, which is rich with hydrocarbon reserves, is one of the key players on the energy market in the resource-rich Caspian region. The Central Asian state has the world's fourth largest natural gas reserves after Russia, Iran and Qatar. It produces about 70-80 billion cubic meters of gas a year.