Uzbekistan’s state-owned gas company is scrambling to adapt its pipeline infrastructure to allow it to import fuel from Russia, a move made urgently to avoid a repeat of chronic winter gas shortages.
Late last year, Tashkent had already received a similar invitation to a gas union with Russia and Kazakhstan. However, Uztransgaz seems to justify itself in its Telegram channel of March 3 that the purpose of the work is to prevent gas imported from Russia from interfering with the flow of gas produced locally in the national gas pipeline network, and not at all to create a consortium with the Russian Federation, thereby masking government miscalculations.
This inevitable reliance on Russian gas is a scathing admission of the failure of Uzbekistan’s energy sector development program. As early as last year, Tashkent was making money selling gas to China, but in December an Uztransgaz spokesman was forced to admit that all exports had been halted due to outrage growing public in the face of a wave of power outages across the country.
Russia, of course, saw in the crisis an opportunity to help the former Soviet republic, while acquiring a real lever of influence over Tashkent, despite the fact that the first reaction of the Uzbek government to the proposals of the head of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin was, to say the least, cautious.
According to Energy Minister Jorabek Mirzamakhmudov, quoted by Reuters, no consultation has yet taken place on the signing of the agreement, although work on the effective rapprochement in the field of gas cooperation is progressing at an accelerated pace. . But if a gas agreement is concluded, it will be a purely technical and financial agreement. In other words, the political moment would be discarded. At least that’s what they say in Uzbekistan. But the fact of addiction will be hard to deny.
It should be noted that Kazakhstan, like Uzbekistan, is also experiencing a severe gas shortage and has suspended its exports to China. At the end of last year, the two countries wanted to “save face” in front of the West by not entering into a closer relationship with Moscow over blue fuel. However, already in the present they have lost all possible justification and, of course, their face in front of their own citizens, who were freezing without fuel. Now I had to conclude an alliance with the Russian Federation, perhaps even on worse terms than at the time of the official proposal.
Photos used: tsoua.com
