Uzbekistan’s natural gas production fell 16.4% in the first nine months of 2026 to 27 billion cubic meters, while electricity generation rose 7.3%, the National Statistics Committee said.

Gas output was 5.3 billion cubic meters below the 32.3 billion produced a year earlier and almost 20% below the 33.7 billion of January-September 2024. September output of about 2.8 billion cubic meters was 17.6% lower than a year earlier but 7.7% higher than in August.

Electricity generation reached 67.16 billion kWh. Small enterprises, including new solar and wind farms, produced 22.76 billion kWh, up 30.3%, lifting their share of total generation from 27.9% to 33.9%. Large enterprises, mainly gas-fired thermal plants, generated 44.4 billion kWh, down 1.5%.

Diesel production rose 11.7% to 979,000 tonnes and gasoline output rose 2.6% to 913,200 tonnes. Coal output fell 6.9% to 5.4 million tonnes, oil fell 1.6% to 482,200 tonnes and gas condensate fell 14.1% to 729,200 tonnes.

Uzbekneftegaz Chief Geologist Nodir Mukhiddinov said on Oct. 27 that depletion of large fields is a main cause of the gas decline.

“Output from new exploration and wells at new fields is not yet enough to fully offset this decline,” he said, adding that reserves at some large fields are more than 80% depleted.

Base output at the company’s fields has fallen by 12.6 million cubic meters a day since the start of the year, and about 5 million cubic meters of daily output remain unreplaced despite repairs and new wells.

Uzbekneftegaz and its subsidiaries produced about 17 billion cubic meters of gas in January-September. The company expects to end 2026 with output of 22.8 billion cubic meters, down 9.5% from 25.2 billion a year earlier and below the president’s January instruction to produce at least 25.4 billion.

Under the updated Uzbekistan-2030 Strategy, the authorities had planned to raise national gas output from 40.2 billion cubic meters in 2026 to 48.5 billion by 2030.