Armenia and Turkmenistan negotiate on gas deal via Iran

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s advisor, Artashes Tumanyan, said that Armenia and Turkmenistan were conducting negotiations on Armenia buying natural gas, with it being supplied through Iran.

‘The Armenian side expressed the desire to prepare a deal for purchasing natural gas from the Turkmengaz state concern, regarding which negotiations consisting of several phases were held’, Tumanyan said.

Armenpress reported Tumanyan further elaborating that during the talks, ‘all technical criteria of the project were discussed’, and that the sides did not agree on the price yet, and that ‘negotiations continue’.

The quantity would be from 600 million up to 1 billion cubic metres of gas.

According to Tumanyan, Iran has agreed to and the negotiations also touched upon the possibility of exporting Turkmen gas via Armenia to Georgia by a Swap system, which Georgia reportedly agreed to.

The news about the talks came as Armenia’s current government is engaged in diversifying its political, economic, and security ties away from Russia, a process that mostly started after Armenia’s defeat in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War. The deterioration of bilateral relations deepened when Armenia faced a lack of support from Russia and the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) during the Azerbaijani attacks on Armenia in 2021 and 2022.

Pashinyan has also pushed the concept that ‘independence is replacing dependence on the few with dependence on the many’, implying that Armenia should reduce its dependence on Russia and instead seek multiple alliances.

As for the second direction of the talks, Tumanyan mentioned that it pertained to the buying and supplying of various petroleum products of Turkmenistan to Armenia, and perhaps other countries.

‘The ball is in our court here. We must provide information and advisory support to Armenian stakeholder companies so that they are able to conduct activities in the Turkmen business environment’, Tumanyan said.

Tumanyan noted that negotiations on energy cooperation have been taking place for the past several years.

The possible supply of Turkmen gas via Iran was reported since the early 2000s. Both current and the previous Armenian administrations were involved in the talks in this regard.

During his visit to Armenia in December 2016, Iran’s then-President Hassan Rouhani announced his country’s readiness to serve as a transit route for Armenia’s gas imports from Turkmenistan. The readiness was reiterated in May 2022 as well.

RFE/RL reported that Turkmenistan was Armenia’s ‘principal supplier of natural gas in the 1990s, until the Armenian government signed a long-term deal with Russia’s Gazprom monopoly’.

Some portion of Armenian gas imports comes from Iran, through a pipeline built in 2008.

In March 2018, then-Armenian Minister of Energy Infrastructures and Natural Resources, Ashot Manukyan, refuted the rumours that there was a political matter and Armenia was more interested in importing gas from Russia.

Manukyan stated that Armenia was discussing both with Turkmenistan and Iran the gas alternative import opportunities, but ‘we do not have a competitive offer yet’.

‘The offer must be so that the price of the proposed gas will be cheaper than the one we import’, he added.

10th meeting of economic cooperation

The statement of the talks on the gas deal came on the same day as Armenia hosted the 10th Armenia-Turkmenistan Intergovernmental Commission for Economic Cooperation meeting.

‘It’s no secret that the current level of trade-economic ties between the two countries doesn’t reflect the entire potential of the two countries. It is obvious that in this regard the bilateral cooperation hasn’t yet reached the desired level and there is a need for expanding it’, Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructures David Khudatyan said.

In turn, Deputy Chair of the Cabinet of Ministers of Turkmenistan Batyr Amanov stated that their strategy was aimed at ‘further deepening partnerships with various countries, including Armenia’.

Reporting on the negotiations in the media of Turkmenistan, one of the most tightly restricted media environments in the world, were scant.