Faced with a serious energy crisis, Uzbekistan will import Russian gas

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev alongside Vladimir Putin on December 26, 2022 in Saint Petersburg.

AP - Alexey Danichev

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

Uzbekistan plans to import Russian gas from March.

This Central Asian country is facing a serious energy crisis.

Faced with energy shortages, Tashkent had to resolve to sign an agreement with Gazprom.

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This announcement comes a few weeks after Moscow floated the idea of ​​a gas union with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.

In mid-January, a roadmap was signed between

and Astana.

It is now the turn of its neighbor to sign a similar agreement.

This relates to technical measures defining the transit of gas via the gas pipeline, which crosses Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Tashkent rejected the concept of political alliance and assured that this agreement with Gazprom did not “ 

 ”.

Uzbekistan among the world's largest gas producers

The decision is all the more difficult for Uzbekistan as the country is one of the world's major gas producers with nearly 58 billion cubic meters produced in 2022. Problem: it suffers, like its Kazakh neighbor, energy shortages . 

To compensate for power and heating cuts despite temperatures dropping in places to minus thirty degrees, Uzbekistan was forced to stop its gas exports in December and reached an agreement with neighboring Turkmenistan, with large resources. gas.

As a result of this crisis, several politicians and senior civil servants had been dismissed.

Deliveries of Russian gas to Uzbekistan, a first for this former Soviet republic, should begin in March. 

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• Uzbekistan

• Russia

• Energies