Now Turkmenistan

On April 9, an accident occurred in Turkmenistan on a gas pipeline through which gas is supplied to Russia. Turkmenistan blames Gazprom for the accident. The Turkmen Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that Gazprom Export “without prior notification to the Turkmen side” sharply reduced the volumes of Turkmen natural gas taken, and “as a result of this, on the section of the SAC-4 gas pipeline through which Turkmen natural gas is supplied to Russia , on the night of April 8-9 of this year, an accident occurred,” Kommersant writes on April 10.

Indeed, according to data from sources in Turkmengaz, cited by the newspaper, Gazprom submitted a request to its Turkmen partners to reduce the extraction from the specified section by 90%, which is why the pressure in the gas pipeline dropped and an explosion occurred. Previously, Gazprom asked Turkmenistan to reduce supplies (but did not indicate how much), explaining that Ukraine, which is the main consumer of Turkmen gas, has reduced its purchases from Gazprom due to the crisis.

The newspaper writes that this story is the consequences of the worsening gas relations between Russia and Turkmenistan. The countries failed to sign an agreement in the gas sector, including a project for the construction of the East-West gas pipeline, which would bring gas from the Turkmen Yolotan field, the largest in the CIS, to the shores of the Caspian Sea. And later it turned out that Turkmenistan announced an international tender for the construction of this gas pipeline. Gazprom felt cheated: Russia's idea was to connect this new gas pipeline with the future Caspian gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Russia through Kazakhstan. Now Russia was able to take revenge by freezing purchases from Turkmenistan, which, as Kommersant clarifies, currently has no one else to sell gas to.