Maksat Babayev, chairman of the state concern Turkmengaz, and Vekilmuhammet Ussayev, deputy chairman of Turkmennebit, closed the three-day Oil and Gas of Turkmenistan conference in Ashgabat on 23 October with the year’s production figures. Gas output is planned at about 80 billion cubic metres in both 2026 and 2027 and oil at 8 million tonnes in each year, and the pipeline section to Afghanistan received a schedule with a condition attached.
Roughly 40 billion cubic metres of the gas is exported, to China and Uzbekistan, Babayev said. Oil output was 7.5 million tonnes last year and is rising, the two executives said, with 8 million tonnes forecast for 2026 and planned again for 2027.
“The negotiation process is ongoing, and the relevant ministries are working on it,” he said.
The Serhetabat to Herat section of TAPI, the pipeline that is to run from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, is the item with a date. Construction is planned to be complete by the end of 2026 and first gas is to flow by mid-2027. Volumes are still being finalised, and the start depends, in Babayev’s words, on the Afghan side’s readiness to receive the gas.
The date follows the progress figure given on the conference’s first day, when TAPI Pipeline Company put construction of the Serhetabat to Herat section at about 80 percent complete, as CAW reported on 22 October.
On the Trans-Caspian pipeline, Babayev said Turkmenistan remains interested and is ready to supply the gas. “The negotiation process is ongoing, and the relevant ministries are working on it,” he said. He described Ashgabat’s interest as wider than the pipe itself and named cable infrastructure, logistics routes and port facilities across the Caspian as part of the same corridor.
The gas for such a line would come from the next phase of Galkynysh’s development, Babayev said, while the field’s fourth phase, which began this year, is planned to supply both export and domestic consumption.
Only one tender looks close to a result: underground gas storage. Seven companies, among them firms from Austria, Germany and Türkiye, have bid to carry out the basic design of underground gas storage in Turkmenistan, Babayev said. The review is in its final stage, and Turkmengaz expects to name a winner soon.
The conference itself grew. About 700 foreign delegates from 75 countries attended, roughly 40 percent more than a year earlier, according to Nazar Atajanov, director of the Turkmen Energy Forum, which co-organised it.
Ashgabat has now dated the Afghan section and tied the date to the Afghan side’s readiness. The Trans-Caspian line left the conference with a sentence about negotiations and no date.