“Back in October, while the world was busy putting out the fires of a financial crisis that still burns, little-thought-of Turkmenistan made a bombshell of an announcement. It seemed to gather little notice at the time. But it could become much more important as the Russian-Ukraine dynamic gets worse.
“Gaffney, Cline and Associates, a British consulting firm, completed an audit of Turkmenistan’s Yoloten-Osman natural gas deposits. Based on GCA’s first results, the fields have a minimum of 4 trillion cubic meters of gas…and as much as 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, a truly staggering sum. The announcement put Yoloten-Osman among the four or five largest natural gas fields in the world.
“The country’s biggest field was Dowalatabad, a rich and extraordinary field in its own right. Yoloten-Osman is at least five times as large. And Turkmenistan has many gas fields not yet explored.
“Turkmenistan has the potential to rival Russia’s clout in natural gas and provide an alternative for Europe. By creating a pipeline from Turkmenistan, through Azerbaijan, Georgia and onto Turkey, the EU could bypass Russia entirely.
“You can be sure the Russians won’t like that. It’s as if Turkmenistan just drew an ace face up — and now Moscow is starting to sweat it a bit. Turkmenistan now has even more clout to peddle with eager Americans, Europeans and the Chinese — all who want Turkmen gas and the opportunity to build out the infrastructure. Russia will have to play the game like everyone else. Turkmenistan is in the driver’s seat.”
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