TASHKENT (TCA) — Russian natural gas giant Gazprom and Uzbekistan’s state oil and gas company Uzbekneftegaz have signed a contract on the purchase of four billion cubic meters of Uzbek gas in 2016, Russian media reported with reference to Gazprom’s documents.
The contract was signed in December 2015.
Since 2006 Gazprom has been developing gas fields in Uzbekistan’s Ustyurt region. Between 2006 and 2013, the Russian company invested $383 million in geological exploration in the area.
Uzbekistan is the third-largest gas producer in the CIS and among the world’s top 10 largest gas-producing countries (63-65 billion cubic meters per year). Uzbekistan exports its gas to China and Russia.
Russian media also reported with reference to Gazprom that in January 2016, the Russian company stopped natural gas imports from Turkmenistan and demanded the Turkmen side reconsider the prices for Turkmen gas purchased in 2010-2015.
It was earlier reported that in July 2015, Gazprom filed a lawsuit against Turkmenistan’s state gas company Turkmengas at an international arbitration court in Stockholm. Officials from Gazprom then said that the lawsuit was filed over the price in a natural gas supply contract.
Earlier in July Turkmen authorities accused Gazprom of failing to pay for Turkmen natural gas supplies since the start of 2015. The amount of the debt was not indicated.
Gazprom purchased natural gas from Turkmenistan for its own use or resale.
The Russian edition of Forbes magazine reported last July that the price Russia paid for Turkmen gas was about $240 per 1,000 cubic meters.
Turkmenistan supplies some 30 billion cubic meters of gas to China each year and plans to double that amount by 2020, while Gazprom plans to start gas exports to China in 2018, gradually increasing flows to 38 billion cubic meters per year from east Siberia.
In recent years, Gazprom purchased 10 billion-11 billion cubic meters of Turkmen natural gas annually.
In October 2014, Gazprom announced its intention to completely refuse from natural gas imports from Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and in February 2015 the Russian gas giant said it would sharply decrease gas imports — from ten billion cubic meters per year down to four billion cubic meters from Turkmenistan and from 3.8 billion cubic meters down to one billion cubic meters a year from Uzbekistan.
