Chinese vice-premier to visit major gas field in Turkmenistan as Beijing aims to shore up energy security and diversify away from volatile maritime routes
2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenKandy WongPublished: 4:30pm, 14 Apr 2026As China looks to central Asia for more energy supplies to offset shipping disruptions amid the Iran war, Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang will travel to Turkmenistan to visit local gas fields and to attend a bilateral cooperation meeting.
Ding, who is China’s top-ranking vice-premier, will kick off his three-day visit on Wednesday by attending the groundbreaking ceremony for the fourth phase of the Galkynysh gas field as President Xi Jinping’s special representative, Xinhua reported.
Ding will also co-chair the seventh meeting of the bilateral cooperation committee with Turkmenistan, which is a major gas supplier to China via a pipeline that runs from central Asia.
“Due to the continuing geopolitical turmoil in the Middle East and closure of the key Strait of Hormuz chokepoint for oil and gas shipments, central Asia has become increasingly important for China’s energy security,” said Rajiv Biswas, CEO of Asia-Pacific Economics in Singapore, noting that Turkmenistan and Russia were the largest sources of China’s pipeline-gas imports.
The central Asian country signed an agreement with China National Petroleum Corporation in March, with the top Chinese oil producer designing and constructing production facilities capable of processing up to 10 billion cubic metres (353 billion cubic feet) of marketable gas annually.
Aleksei Chigadaev, an associate fellow with the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, said China had been systematically strengthening the resilience of its national energy system – stockpiling strategic reserves of food, fuel and raw materials, coupled with an import-diversification strategy – in the face of an “unstable world order”.
