MOSCOW, July 28 (UPI) -- Turkmenistan reached a deal with Gazprom in which the Russian energy giant will begin buying its gas at twice its current price, officials said.
The deal, reached late last week, pegs the cost of natural gas from Turkmenistan on a pricing formula mixing a range of market conditions bringing the price from $140 per thousand cubic meters to around $260, the Russian commercial daily newspaper Kommersant reported Monday.
Gazprom also agreed to invest in gas transportation and to build infrastructure to explore gas fields in the Central Asian country.
"We have reached agreements about Gazprom's financing and building new gas-main pipelines from the east of the country, constructing gas fields and boosting the capacity of the (Turkmen) sector of the Caspian gas pipeline to 30 billion cubic meters," said Gazprom chief Alexei Miller.
Officials in Turkmenistan earlier this year announced plans to sell gas at $350 per thousand cubic meters, making the Gazprom deal particularly attractive in the current market, the report said.
