On 12 July the Turkmen state information agency TDH published an article devoted to the accomplishments in Turkmenistan’s foreign policy.
However, the next day the news report was deleted from the website. Its copy was saved on the website Internet archive.
There is nothing newsworthy in the article and it presents a newsfeed, which have been previously covered by TDH except one news report devoted to the resuming of Turkmen gas exports to Russia. For an unknown reason the state-run television channels, newspapers and the website of the state information agency avoid this topic.
The deleted message says that “this year after a commercial break the supplies of Turkmen gas to the Russian Federation have been resumed. The relevant contract was signed within the framework of “the intergovernmental agreement between Turkmenistan and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the oil and gas sector up to the year 2028”.
Let us recall that starting since April 2019 “Turkmengas” has resumed gas exports to Russian and later a contract for annual supplies of 5.5 billion cubic meters of gas starting from 1 July, 2019 was concluded with “Gazprom”.
The new agreement was signed for five years, i.e.until 2024 and apparently this was a stumbling block: Turkmenistan allegedly believes that gas exports must be resumed within the framework of the 25 year contract, concluded in 2003 under the same terms and conditions with the same volumes 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year.
Pursuant to the agreement, signed two weeks ago, the volume of Turkmen gas “Gazprom” intents to import is expected to halve compared to 2014.