BAKU, Azerbaijan, Sept. 1
By Klavdiya Romakayeva - Trend:
Any way of monetizing Turkmen gas resources would have a positive impact, analyst of Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES), Julian Bowden told Trend.
According to Bowden, Turkmenistan consistently adheres to its line of positive neutrality, refusing to take sides with regard to the situation in Afghanistan.
He also believes that it will take some time for Afghanistan's politics to settle down, and for the new geopolitical order to become clear.
“If the Taliban does establish political control over the country, then that should solve the big questions around TAPI security in Afghanistan, both for the construction phase and the operational phase,” he noted.
“However, key will be Taliban economic policy, and how the world sees this. A social policy involving purges, putting women back into the house and so on will not be helpful to pursuing a more engaged economic policy. But, if a satisfactory economic policy does emerge, then attention will turn to likely new commercial terms for the gas sales, and financing. This last point might be the hardest: it is going to be very hard to find international lending institutions willing to finance this. The main reason is climate change, energy transition and net zero, and the problem lenders will increasingly have in lending to fossil-fuel projects. TAPI will have to position itself as coal replacement, and even here it will need to tell a very convincing and coherent story. All this will take time, and meanwhile the world moves on,” he said.
He added that one possibility is that in the geopolitical rearrangements, China takes an even more active role.
“China is already very involved in the Galknysh (gas and oil field of Turkmenistan) upstream and is importing gas from Turkmenistan, and it might well be main source for finding the funding required. But in this outcome, TAPI might become just TAP,” Bowden stressed.
Regarding TAPI’s possible positive impact on Turkmenistan, Bowden said that clearly any way of monetizing Turkmen gas resources would have a positive impact.
“If TAPI is further delayed (as looks probable while the political and geopolitical furniture is rearranged), then other monetization routes will need to be sought. In this circumstance, then a Trans Caspian project looking to markets westwards could come back onto the scene,” he said.
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