Uzbekistan cuts gas production, increases electricity generation

The Statistics Agency has published data on industrial production for January-June 2023.

It is noted that during the first 6 months of this year, the volume of gas production amounted to 23.56 billion cubic meters, which decreased by 2.51 billion cubic meters (26.07 billion cubic meters in January-June 2022) or 9.6% compared to the same period last year.

Gas production indicators for January-June 2023:

• January – 4.31 billion cubic meters;
• February – 3.85 billion cubic meters;
• March – 4.16 billion cubic meters;
• April – 3.94 billion cubic meters;
• May – 3.6 billion cubic meters;
• June – 3.7 billion cubic meters.

For information, in 2022, gas production decreased from 53.8 billion to 51.66 billion cubic meters, or 4%.

In recent years, due to the reduction of gas production and increasing demand in the domestic market, Uzbekistan has seriously reduced the sale of natural gas abroad. In particular, in 2020, exports to Russia were completely stopped and the volume of deliveries to China decreased. On the contrary, according to the information provided by the Ministry of Energy, starting from October of this year, Uzbekistan will start exporting 9 million cubic meters of gas per day from Russia. The annual volume is about 2.8 billion cubic meters.

Also, during the reporting period, coal production decreased by 7.1 thousand tons, gas condensate production by 47 thousand tons, and oil production increased by 7.9 thousand tons.

In the first half of the year, electricity production increased by 4.3% or 1.57 billion kWh compared to the same period last year. In particular, in January-June 2022, 36.5 billion kWh of electricity was produced, while this indicator reached 38 billion kWh in the corresponding period of this year.

In the first 6 months of 2023, 650,900 tons of gasoline (15.7% increase), 539,400 tons of diesel fuel (2-fold increase) were produced.