OREANDA-NEWS. December 9, 2009. Participants of the 2nd International Exhibition on the Key Trends in the Development of Power Industry of Turkmenistan speak.

Artyom Mikhalkin, Business Development Manager for the Caspian Region of General Electric (US)

- General Electric is the largest international company that provides clients with high-tech solutions in various sectors of the economy and operates in over 140 countries including Turkmenistan. In your country we are implementing many joint projects in collaboration with our Turkmen partners in power industry, oil and gas, water treatment and energy supply sector.

- Our company has provided state-of-the-art equipment and offered the effective technologies to increase hydrocarbon production in Keymir field. We also have procured directional drilling equipment for a number of the foreign oil and gas companies that operate in Turkmenistan.

- In power industry we procure gas turbines, and together with the Turkmen partners we build the power plants, seven of which operate successfully. Three new power plants – Ahal, Avaza and Vostochnaya will be put into operation.

- The equipment and engineering solutions provided by our company have been adopted and successfully operate at many facilities throughout Turkmenistan including Turkmenbashi oil refineries, Maryazot, the power plants in Ashgabat, Balkanabat, Abadan. In particular, it was the Abadan power plant in Turkmenistan that General Electric installed the first gas turbine at.

- I would like to note that the General Electric equipment first arrived in Turkmenistan more than 10 years ago. Today we can say with confidence that our cooperation is developed at a good pace. We expect mutually advantageous partnership with Turkmenistan to further develop and enhance.

- Our joint efforts will contribute to the successful implementation of the large-scale plans aimed at technology modernization of the priority sectors of Turkmen economy that demonstrates continued progress.

Edgar Zaynutdinov, KAR-Holding Marketing Director (Russia, Tatarstan)

- Our company is specialized in electric power engineering. We perform the complete cycle of works from design to procurement of equipment, turnkey construction of power facilities, building and construction works, support manning and maintenance. We also reconstruct and modernize energy facilities including gas turbine power plants and substations.

- KAR-Holding actively operates in Russia and abroad, we have completed the projects in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan. The operation on the Turkmen energy market is a priority of our activity today.

- We see that the leadership of your country pays great attention to the development of this priority sector. This contributes to a dynamic increase in the productive potential of Turkmenistan’s power industry that offers, in its turn, new incentives to expand international cooperation to implement new sectoral projects.

- We hope that our expertise, technological potential and experience in implementing projects in other countries will be used in Turkmenistan. We have already proposed a number of the projects to the Turkmen partners aiming to use our technologies for reconstruction and modernization of the thermal power station in Mary and Turkmenbashi, construction of substations. At present, our company procures advanced equipment for a number of the energy facilities in Turkmenistan.

- I would like to highly evaluate the professionalism and qualification of Turkmen power engineers that, of course, facilitates joint work because we speak the same technical language. This mans that Turkmenistan managed not only to reserve human resources but also to ensure high-quality training of young energy engineers and experts, and thus maintain succession in professional personnel training.

- In addition to cooperation in the energy sector our company collaborates on the projects to promote international tourism. Through the efforts of the President of Turkmenistan this sector ranks among the priorities of Turkmen economy. A plot of land was allocated In Avaza national tourism zone for our company where we are going to build an indoor ski complex. We made presentation of the project this summer, and we have launched the project work. In particular, our experts have visited the similar complexes in Austria, Finland, Germany, Japan, and now they are selecting equipment and technologies that will be used in Turkmenistan. We want to the ski complex in Avaza to the most progressive facility of its kind at the opening.

- Thus, KAR-Holding views Turkmenistan is very dependable and promising partner, mutually advantageous cooperation with which can be successfully developed in various sectors of the dynamically developing economy.