Uzbekistan expects its natural gas imports to reach 10 billion to 11 billion cubic meters annually by 2030, energy minister Jurabek Mirzamahmudov said, citing challenges the government faces in growing domestic gas output.

The Central Asian nation does not publish data on gas import volumes, but Russia’s Gazprom GAZP.MM and transit nation Kazakhstan have said they plan to pump 3.8 bcm of Russian gas to Uzbekistan in 2024.

In a video interview with local political podcast Lolazor late on Tuesday, Mirzamahmudov attributed issues with growing domestic production to the complexity of developing new deposits and declining production in existing ones.

Talking about the new Surgil gas project in Ustyurt, a hydrocarbons-rich plateau in northwestern Uzbekistan, the minister said the field was proving to be difficult and costly to develop.

“If we succeed in developing gas fields in Ustyurt… then we could consider reducing the projected 10-11 billion cubic meters of gas imports by 2030,” he said.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Mukhammadsharif Mamatkulov; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Jan Harvey)