Turkey, Japan sign $1.7B gas-to-liquids project with Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan, holder of the world's fourth-largest natural gas reserves, signed a $1.7 billion deal with a Turkish-Japanese consortium on Tuesday to build a gas-to-liquids plant as part of its strategy to maximize revenues from its gas riches.

"This is the first gas processing facility in the world which will employ a high-end technology to process natural gas into gasoline," Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.

The project will be implemented by Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Turkey's Ronesans Endustri Tesisleri. "It will produce here annually 600,000 tonnes of gasoline with octane rating of 92. The cost of the project is estimated at $1.7 billion," Berdymukhamedov said

The plant will process annually 1.785 billion cubic meters of natural gas, Berdymukhamedov said.