The Game is afoot, or another look East of the Caspian.
Posted by Heading Out on Thu Apr 06 at 11:43 PM EST
The story in today's Washington Post was largely related to the problems that Gazprom, the company that, as noted earlier in the week, now produces 25% of the world's gas, are having. The article sees "a looming decline in gas production" from Russia's current fields, while the Russian public still sees natural gas as an abundant cheap resort where less than 10% of residential and industrial gas consumers have gas meters. This is obviously going to be a problem for Western Europe, and perhaps the U.S. since both are planning on getting help with supply from Russia, and if their domestic demand is rising while supplies are falling, the export supply is going to decline quite rapidly.
However, it is a small paragraph in the story that caught my eye.
In recent years Russia has boosted gas supplies by squeezing Turkmenistan to sell gas to Russia at a deep discount. But Turkmen gas production is poised to decline, and Turkmenistan's gas industry is barely functional because the country's political environment is scary for long-term investors. Other Central Asian suppliers, notably Kazakhstan, are unlikely to be able to bridge the gap.
And this seemed odd to me, since Tuesday's post was all about Turkmenistan agreeing to sell China some gas. So I thought I'd, as they say, take a closer look.
There's more... (1870 words) |
theoildrum.com |
