A Ukrainian contractor has begun a one- billion-dollar (900-million-euro) reconstruction of a natural gas pipeline that will help Turkmenistan boost its gas exports. Once reconstructed the currently disused pipeline, which skirts the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan to Russia, \"will have a capacity of between eight billion and 10 billion cubic metres annually,\" the Neitralny Turkmenistan daily said. The Ukrainian company Petrogasasia has started raising the pipeline on stilts across the entrance to the Gulf of Garabogaz, which lies between Turkmenistan\'s southern natural gas fields and its northern border with Kazakhstan, the newspaper said. Ukraine got involved when Turkmenistan signed a 25-year contract with Russian giant Gazprom agreeing to supply at least 60 billion cubic metres (2.1 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas a year until 2009, after which the volume will increase to between 70 and 80 billion cubic metres annually. Though much of the gas is likely to be exported to western European markets some will go to Ukraine, partly as payment for the reconstruction work. Russia is also expected to participate in the reconstruction and Russian payment for gas will partly be in the form of goods. Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic, possesses one of the top 12 natural gas reserves in the world but its only working pipelines are to Russia\'s Siberian region and to its southern neighbour Iran, neither of which is a big natural gas market. (AFP)