Turkmenistan delivers synthetic gasoline to Afghanistan

AKIPRESS.COM - A train carrying a batch of synthetic gasoline produced in Turkmenistan pulled into a station just across the border in Afghanistan earlier this week. The size of the delivery was not stated in Turkmen state media accounts, but the significance of this event may be very considerable, Eurasianet.org reports.
The fuel is the first commercial export product generated by the $1.7 billion gas-to-liquids plant that was opened on June 28 in Ovadan-Depe, just outside the capital, Ashgabat, with great ceremony. The projected output figures are impressive. TDH state news agency has estimated the plant will every year - once it reaches peak capacity - take 1.8 billion cubic meters of natural gas and convert it into 600,000 tons of the type of gasoline one might find down at the local filling station. For sake of comparison, that is roughly the same amount of gasoline that Kazakhstan has said it hopes to export this year.
Local Turkmen media are touting the Eco-93 fuel being made at Ovadan-Depe as an environmentally friendly breakthrough. Warming to this theme, President Gurbanguly Berdymuhamedov, who at one stage engaged in filling a car fuel tank for the cameras, hailed the project as an important step toward turning Turkmenistan into one of the world's foremost green economies.