NOVOSIBIRSK (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev held talks on Thursday to speed construction of a key Central Asian gas pipeline, as rivalry over the region's energy riches intensifies.
At the talks in the central Siberian city of Novosibirsk, the Kazakh leader said that major infrastructure investment was needed to support work on the pipeline, intended to skirt around the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan through Kazakhstan to Russia.
"Today Vladimir Putin and I were able to discuss prospects for creating a Caspian Sea transport corridor" to support work on the pipeline, Nazarbayev said after the talks in the central Siberian city of Novosibirsk.
"Work on the Caspian Sea coast project demands a high-technology system at world-class level, including automobile, rail and highway connections for delivery of gas and oil pipelines," he said.
Russia badly needs extra supplies from the gas-rich state of Turkmenistan to help it meet growing European demand, as Moscow has under-invested in its own reserves.
A landmark agreement in May to build the Caspian shore pipeline was seen as a blow to US and European hopes for an alternative route that would avoid Russia by crossing the Caspian Sea.
The pipeline is expected to strengthen the commanding position Russia has over Central Asian energy exports at a time when China is flexing new-found muscle in the region and other Western-backed projects are also emerging.
The United States and the European Union have been battling for greater access to oil and gas from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, while the existing Soviet-era pipeline network is badly in need of renewal.
Putin and Nazarbayev also hailed growing trade ties and a series of agreements were signed on economic cooperation, border controls, customs and banking.
"In the first seven months of this year alone, bilateral trade rose 40 percent to over 10 billion dollars (seven billion euros). By the end of the year, the figure has every chance of reaching 16 billion dollars," Putin said.
The West's hopes of gaining a larger share of Central Asian energy were boosted last month when Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov made the first-ever trip to the United States by a Turkmen leader and invited foreign energy companies to invest in his country.
Kazakhstan, which holds the world's ninth-biggest oil reserves, plans to triple oil production by 2015. Turkmenistan, estimated to hold the tenth-biggest gas reserves, plans to triple gas production by 2030.
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