Turkmenistan and Hungary reached an agreement on gas supplies during high-level talks in Budapest on Sunday, Trend news agency reported on Sunday.
The talks took place within the framework of Turkmen President Serdar Berdimuhamedov's visit to Budapest to participate in the celebrations of the World Athletics Championships, as well as the country's national holiday – St. Stephen's Day. According to the report, the next step to this end is the holding of commercial negotiations.
Earlier, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto talked on the need to construct a 300-kilometer-long pipeline with a capacity of 30 billion cubic meters per year, as well as to expand the capacity of pipelines in the Southeastern Europe.
Azerbaijan is currently working on a project to expand the capacity of the Southern Gas Corridor, Trend reports. This corridor, launched in 2020, is one of the key sources of gas supply to European countries.
As per Trend, in this context, the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline presents an intriguing opportunity. This project seeks to link Turkmenistan's Turkmenbashi and Baku through a subsea pipeline, connecting to the Southern Gas Corridor. By doing so, it could access significant Turkmen gas reserves and provide gas to both Turkey and Europe. Azerbaijan, in turn, has declared its readiness to provide its territory and help in gas transit.
Experts state that the construction cost for this pipeline varies around $30 billion. They are also convinced that the Turkmen authorities must engage with European gas companies, including the clear choice of SOCAR as the intermediary.
In July this year, the Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan said that the idea of building the Trans-Caspian gas pipeline put forward by Turkmenistan is considered by Ashgabat not only as an economically and commercially profitable project but also as an important one for diversifying energy routes and ensuring global energy security, taking into account equally the interests of producers, consumers, and transit countries. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan notes that all parties involved in the implementation of the project agree with this notion.
