Given Turkmenistan’s tendency to “revisit” agreements (especially when other potential customers such as Turkey, Pakistan, Europe, and Russia are also knocking on the door re: buying gas), it may be prudent to wait and see how this deal shakes out, but certainly another good example of China’s (via CNPC) efforts to lock up alternatives to coal to feed its rapidly growing energy demands.

Courtesy of the Financial Times (full article here):

China has signed an agreement with Turkmenistan to produce gas there and transport it via a new pipeline that could open up the first non-Russian route for gas exports out of landlocked central Asia.

Chinese state media said on Wednesday that the deal, sealed by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and Turkmengas, Turkmenistan’s state gas company, marked a “substantial step” towards realisation of an earlier pact between the two countries.

Turkmenistan last year agreed to supply China with 30bn cubic metres of gas a year for 30 years via a new pipeline to be funded by the Chinese. But the field’s location, the pipeline route and the price of future Turkmen gas exports to China have never been released. Analysts speculate that the agreement, signed during a state visit by Gurmanguly Berdymukhammedov, Turkmenistan’s president, to China this week, might not be final. …