A month after Turkmenistan’s top leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, was warmly welcomed in Beijing, China’s Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang joined him at a ceremony inaugurating a new phase of work on the Galkynysh gas field.

According to the AFP, Berdymukhamedov said at the event, “Our country regards China as a strategic partner.”

China is Turkmenistan’s most significant trade partner. Although Ashgabat is shy with statistics, independent assessments suggest that around 90 percent of Turkmenistan’s gas exports go to China via the three existing lines of the China-Central Asia gas pipeline.

A fourth line – Line D – is long delayed. Work formally began in 2014 on the pipeline, which China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) has said would expand capacity of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline network up to 85 billion cubic meters (bcm) annually (other sources, such as Turkmen state gas company, Turkmenga, said the expansion would bring capacity up to 65 bcm annually).

Despite consistent chatter about the need for diversification, Ashgabat has struggled to reach customers other than China given infrastructure constraints. And China has been happy to lock in additional supplies from Turkmenistan.

Last week, Turkmengaz and a subsidiary of China’s CNPC signed a contract for the construction of the fourth phase of the development of the Galkynysh gas field.

According to Reuters, the fourth phase project includes the construction by CNPC of a facility for processing an additional 10 bcm of gas ?per year, in addition to the drilling of new wells. The project will be financed entirely by Turkmenistan, a source told Reuters, with Turkmengaz head ?Maksat Babaev saying that it will cost $5.1 billion.

Galkynysh is one of the world’s largest gas fields. Turkmenistan is sitting on an estimated 27.4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas between Galkynysh and the nearby Yashlar and Garakol fields. 

Following its 2006 discovery, contracts to develop the Galkynysh field were awarded to China’s CNPC, South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering, and Petrofac, a British company. The field began producing natural gas in 2013, and since then almost the entirely of Turkmenistan’s gas exports have gone to China.

As Eurasianet noted in late March, Chinese and Turkmen officials differ as to how much gas Turkmenistan actually exports to China. Berdymuhamedov said in a mid-March interview that the figure was around 40 bcm. In late March, the Chinese ambassador in Ashgabat suggested that Turkmenistan only exported around 30 bcm to China in 2025.

Berdymuhamedov has stated repeatedly that Turkmenistan aims to eventually export 65 bcm annually to China.

In 2023, when the Galkynysh field’s third phase was inaugurated, then-Turkmengaz Chair Batyr Amanov said the expansion would ensure the supply of 33 bcm of commercial gas per year through the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline. 

In late 2024, work was reportedly begun on TAPI’s Serhetabat-Herat section – from the Turkmen border to Herat – with Taliban authorities in Afghanistan touting that 2.9 kilometers of pipeline had been constructed by February 2025. Six years earlier, then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani posed, smiling, with then-Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, then-Pakistani Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, and then-Indian Minister of State for External Affairs M.J. Akbar to mark the entry of the TAPI pipeline into Afghanistan following the conclusion of construction work on the Turkmen portion. 

In September 2024, Turkmenistan held another ceremony marking the TAPI pipeline’s entry into Afghanistan, this time joined by Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov’s son – who became president in 2022 – and Acting Taliban Prime Minister Muhammad Hassan Akhund.

Afghanistan is TAPI’s largest hurdle, with 774 of the pipeline’s planned 1,814 kilometers crossing its territory. The ongoing conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which Pakistani officials referred to as “open war” in late February, certainly presents a problem for TAPI, as do continually poor relations between India and Pakistan. 

There are seven phases planned for the development of the Galkynysh gas field, with the total production target around 200 bcm per year. Ashgabat has flirted with sending gas to Europe via an envisioned Trans-Caspian gas pipeline, but that has yet to materialize. Gas swap deals via Iran are likely a casualty of the current crisis in the Middle East. 

As such, China remains Turkmenistan’s most reliable customer. 

A Chinese readout of Vice Premier Ding’s recent visit to Turkmenistan was unequivocal, identifying natural gas cooperation as “a cornerstone of China-Turkmenistan relations.”