The Minister of Energy Zhurabek Mirzamakhmudov and the CEO of the Russian Gazprom Alexei Miller signed a road map for cooperation in the gas industry, the press service of Gazprom said.
During the meeting, the parties reportedly "reviewed the current and future matters of cooperation."
The details of the Roadmap were not given.
A week earlier, Gazprom also signed a road map with Kazakhstan. The document concerned the processing of Kazakh gas at the Orenburg gas processing plant (GPP), the possibility of Russian gas supplies to Kazakhstan and promising cooperation projects.
Tripartite Alliance?
Earlier at the end of November 2022, it became known that Russia offered Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to create a Tripartite sas slliance. The Russian authorities stated that this proposal did not imply the supply of gas in exchange for political demands, but it is about the coordination of commercial interests.
This matter was discussed with Russian partners during a series of bilateral meetings.
Initially, Russia proposed to supply natural gas of Russian origin in reverse order, through Kazakhstan via the Central Asia-Center (CAC) pipeline.
Russia’s main demand was the handover of Uzbekistan’s gas transmission system to the ownership of Gazprom at market value. Similar demands were put forward by the National Company "Kazakgaz", which did not agree to such conditions.
The second demand put forward by the Russian side was to cede the rights to export gas to China. That is, Gazprom offered to become a party to the agreement instead of the Uzbek company UzGazTrade.
Reportedly, as a result of bilateral negotiations in December, the demands set by the Russian side were lifted.
It is planned to hold a series of additional meetings to assess the technical feasibility of gas supplies. However, the scale of the necessary work requires the mobilization of significant amounts of funding. In this regard, the practical possibility of organizing supplies is unlikely, sources say.
Energy Minister Zhurabek Mirzamakhmudov in December 2022, amid the energy crisis that began in Uzbekistan with the onset of cold weather, said that Uzbekistan was negotiating to import gas from its neighbors - as part of a commercial contract, and not through "some kind of alliance or union."
