President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev, during a conference call on eliminating deficiencies in preparation for winter, instructed to reduce gas exports and more actively attract investors to gas production projects
“The head of state instructed to reduce gas exports and direct it, first of all, to meet the needs of the population. Due to this, an additional 7-8 million cubic meters of natural gas will be sent to the regions per day.
Also, another 217 thousand tons of liquefied gas will be supplied for the needs of the population,” said the press service of the head of state.
“The analysis shows that today the gas supply is experiencing a shortage of 20 million cubic meters of gas per day. As a result, the pressure in the gas pipelines has dropped in more than a thousand residential areas,” the press release said.
“The possibility of increasing natural gas production was noted by transferring 25 ineffectively operating fields to investors on the basis of risk service contracts,” the press service noted.
In addition, for the uninterrupted supply of industries and regions in the winter, it is also necessary to generate an additional 10-12 million kWh of electricity per day, the task is to ensure this deficiency by launching 5 power units with a capacity of 900 MW at Tashkent, Syrdarya and Novoangren power plants.
Power outages are mainly related to the deterioration of 60% of distribution networks and the growing demand for electricity. In this regard, it is necessary to develop a program for the stage-by-stage modernization of low and medium voltage networks and start its implementation as soon as possible, the press service specifies.
Earlier in July, Mirziyoyev said that due to COVID-19, Uzbekistan stopped exporting gas to Russia, and reduced it three times to China.
According to Uzbekneftegaz JSC, in the export structure, supplies of Uzbek gas to China amount to about 10 billion cubic meters (bcm), to Russia – 4 bcm, and the remaining small volumes fall on neighboring countries of Central Asia.
Natural gas production in Uzbekistan in January-September 2020 compared to the same period in 2019 decreased by 19.6%, to 44.878 bcm. Following the results of nine months, more than 51.65 billion kWh of electricity was generated (an increase of 4%).
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