RUSSIAN gas export monopoly Gazprom signed a deal on Tuesday to buy natural gas from the Central Asian state of Turkmenistan at an increased price, averting a risk of a disruption in supply to Europe, REPORTED REUTERS. Turkmenistan had threatened to cease supplies if a new deal was not in place by the time Gazprom's current agreed quota expired next month. It will now sell gas to Gazprom at $100 per 1,000 cubic metres until the end of 2009. “Basically we determined that in the upcoming three years and remaining three months (of this year)... we will deliver 162 billion cubic meters of gas to Russia,” Turkmenistan's President-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov said. “The price is of course good, $100,” he said at a joint news conference with Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller, following talks in the capital Ashgabat. “We are not greedy people.” Turkmenistan, a landlocked ex-Soviet state, appears to have achieved what it set out to do when it announced in June that it wanted Gazprom to pay $100 instead of the $65 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas that it paid under its current agreement. Turkmenistan supplies the bulk of the gas import needs of Ukraine, delivered by pipeline across Russia, making it possible for Gazprom to export more of its own gas to more lucrative European markets. Any halt in Central Asian supplies could mean less fuel reaches Europe through Ukraine's transit pipelines. A pricing row between Ukraine and Russia at the start of this year hit some European countries after Gazprom halted gas supplies for a several days. Gazprom's Miller said that his company and Turkmenistan had agreed to review the gas price every three years. High Risk Turkmenistan's threat to cut supplies was a high-risk one for the country as it would have starved it of a main source of income. Since independence in 1991, Turkmenistan has forged what it calls a foreign policy of “neutrality” that has seen it snub both Russian and Western influence in Central Asia. But it is still reliant on Gazprom's Soviet-era pipeline network to get almost all of its gas to market. Turkmenistan and China have signed a deal to build a natural gas pipeline between the countries by 2009, although it is not clear how the link, which will have to run through neighbouring Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, can be built by then. Niyazov did not comment on that on Tuesday but said it would be fed with gas from the right bank of the Amu Darya river.
