A pipeline blast in Turkmenistan on Thursday fully halted Turkmen gas exports to Russia, which said the accident would not have an impact on its customers in Europe, Reuters reported. Turkmenistan is the biggest gas producer in Central Asia and Russia's gas export monopoly Gazprom buys up to 50 billion cubic metres of its gas a year to meet its export obligations and demand at home. "The accident won't have an impact on gas supplies to Gazprom's customers," Gazprom said in a statement, which did not specify the cause of the explosion but said it had caused a fire. It said the blast had damaged the pipeline on Thursday morning and the Turkmen side was studying options to send gas via previously unused links of trunk pipelines between Russia and Turkmenistan. An industry source in Kazakhstan said repairs could take up to three days.
