Armenia has a renewed interest in purchasing gas from Turkmenistan to reduce its dependency from Russia. It is not the first time they have mentioned this possibility, but Iran’s current good relations with Turkmenistan could be a deciding factor.
On March 26 Artashes Tumanyan, advisor to the Armenian Prime Minister, announced that Armenia and Turkmenistan were negotiating gas purchases. He said so at the 10th Armenia-Turkmenistan Intergovernmental Commission for Economic Cooperation held in Yerevan.
According to Tumanyan, it would be a swap deal including Iran (i.e. Iran would import Turkmen gas in its northeast and export to Armenia the same amount from its northwest) and the amount would range from 600 million cubic metres (mcm) to 1 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas. If it materialised, Georgia could be included in another agreement with Armenia in this case acting as the intermediary.
Back to the future
Despite the distance that separates Armenia from Turkmenistan, the former is no stranger to Turkmen gas. Back in the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia satisfied large part of its energy needs by importing Turkmen gas. However, due to the lack of a direct connection, the resource had to cross Russia and Georgia before reaching Armenia. Issues with payments and the unreliability of the supply given Georgia’s instability put an end to this arrangement in benefit of Russian gas.
Since then, the idea of exporting Turkmen gas to Armenia through a swap deal has resurfaced periodically. It did in 2017, when the then Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetian mentioned it during a meeting with the Turkmen and Iranian ambassadors. Some years later, in 2022, Turkmen official refloated the possibility of exporting gas and electricity to Armenia through Iran. Now, in 2025 the export of Turkmen gas to Armenia is back on the table. But will it materialise?
Iran as the key
It is yet very early to predict if Turkmenistan will export gas to Armenia once again. Reaching an agreement on the price would seem like one of the obstacles to overcome, as Azerbaijanis and Turkmens found out in early 2024. The other hurdle would be Iran.
When Karapetian talked about importing Turkmen gas via Iran in 2017, the relations between Ashgabat and Teheran were reaching a low point. Later that year, the Turkmen government accused its Iranian counterpart of owing around $1.8 billion on unpaid fees and cut off gas supplies altogether. But things have changed since then.
In 2021, Turkmenistan, Iran and Azerbaijan signed an agreement to supply Turkmen gas to Baku via swap. In 2023 the Iranians finished paying the amount owed. In late 2024, another swap agreement was signed, this time between Turkmenistan, Iran and Iraq. Finally, in March 2024 Turkmen gas started to flow to Turkey after yet another swap agreement had been reached with Iran.
Teheran is the key piece of the puzzle and, as the swap agreements involving Azerbaijan, Iraq and Turkey show, it would seem that it now has the political will to do so.
Win-win for Yerevan and Ashgabat
Another circumstance that is now different to 2017 or 2022 is the state of relations between Armenia and Russia. These have worsened in the past years due to the passive role played by Moscow in the Nagorno-Karabakh wars that saw the return of the region to Azerbaijan. Therefore it is not surprising that Armenia wants to reduce the amount of gas it imports from Russia, as its Minister of Economy stated in 2024.
Currently, Armenia imports natural gas from both Russia and Iran. However, it is Gazprom that accounts for ~85% of Yerevan’s gas imports, with the remainer coming from Iran under a gas-for-electricity barter agreement dating back to 2006.
Given that Armenia imported some 2.6 bcm of gas from Russia in 2023, the potential Turkmen imports would not substitute Russian gas. But they could complement it. However, for that to happen, among other things, the Turkmen will have to take into consideration the price of $165 per thousand cubic metres that Gazprom charges Armenia.
For Ashgabat, finding a new export market should always be a positive development. Russia, who at one point imported more than 40 bcm of Turkmen gas, is no longer a customer since last year, while full exports to Iran have not resumed since the arbitration. Despite exporting most of its gas to China, the swap deals with Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkey, and exports to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan is far from its export peak of 2008.
After years of inaction, except for the chimeric Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, it seems that of late the Turkmen authorities have been somewhat more realistic when finding export markets. Exporting gas to Armenia will not solve the financial issues in Ashgabat as the amounts discussed are very modest. But something is better than nothing. The prospect of then including Georgia in another deal is more unlikely given the pro-Russian stance of the country’s governing party. But it remains an enticement.
Time will tell if this time the negotiations to bring Turkmen gas to Armenia will be successful. The international context has changed, as well the internal situation of both countries, but that by itself does not guarantee anything. With Iran onboard, the pricing remains the largest obstacle. At least publicly. There might be other factors at play which are harder to grasp.