Turkmenistan to increase natural gas exports to Russia by more than 50 percent

    Turkmenistan will increase its annual natural gas exports to Russia by more than 50 percent, the government said Tuesday, in a move that will increase further Russia's leverage as a natural gas supplier to Europe and elsewhere.

   The announcement follows an agreement reached in May by the two countries and Kazakhstan to modernize Moscow-backed pipeline routes along the shores of the Caspian Sea to carry Turkmen gas into Europe. That agreement was widely perceived as a blow to efforts by the United States to develop a new pipeline under the Caspian that would circumvent Russian pipelines — currently Turkmenistan's only export routes.

  In a statement, the government said widening and reconstructing existing, Soviet-era pipelines and building a new one would allow Turkmenistan's gas exports to Russia to reach 80 billion cubic meters annually — up from 50 billion currently. The statement was released as Russian Vice Prime Minister Sergei Naryshkin met in Ashgabat with President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov.

  The United States and Russia are jockeying for influence in Turkmenistan, which has the second-biggest gas reserves among all ex-Soviet republics after Russia, and whose resources are playing an increasingly important role in regional politics. Berdymukhamedov has also expressed interest in the U.S.-backed undersea pipeline.