ALMATY: Kazakhstan does not currently have the energy resources to join the proposed Trans-Caspian natural gas pipeline, the Central Asian state’s oil and gas minister said on Thursday.
The submarine project linking resource-rich Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan with existing pipelines to Europe is seen by the EU as an option in its efforts to reduce energy dependence on Russia.
The EU launched Trans-Caspian talks with Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan last month and this week sent an energy delegation to Kazakhstan, which is in the process of negotiating a broader cooperation agreement.
But Kazakh Oil and Gas Minister Sauat Mynbayev said on Thursday that current gas production rates precluded the possibility of the ex-Soviet state joining the EU project at this stage.
“Right now we don’t yet have those kinds of resources (to take part in the project),” Mynbayev told an energy conference in Kazakhstan’s financial capital Almaty.
EU states buy nearly a third of their gas from Russia and have been seeking ways to curb that dependence -- a policy also supported by the United States amid fears of the Kremlin using energy as a political weapon.
Kazakhstan is estimated to have 85 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, with most of it in the Karagachak gas and oil field in the pre-Caspian basin in western Kazakhstan.
Russia is currently developing a South Stream pipeline in the same region as EU’s Nabucco project and plans to begin deliveries by 2016.—AFP
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