DUSHANBE, November 8, Asia-Plus — Tajik state natural-gas distributor, Tojiktransgaz, has paid off its US$2.5 million debt to Uzbekistan, the source at Tojiktransgaz said.
According to him, Tojiktransgaz fully repaid its debt and made prepayment in an amount of US$600,000 last week. “Due to this Uzbekistan has increased hourly gas supply to Tajikistan to 25,000 cubic meters,” the source said, noting that the major part of Uzbek gas deliveries (21,000 cubic meters per hour) is distributed to the Tajik Aluminum Company (TALCO) and Tojikcement (Dushanbe cement plant) and the remainder is distributed to enterprises and residential customers in Sughd province.
We will recall that Uzbekistan had cut the hourly natural-gas supply to Tajikistan to 12,000 cubic meters due the debts.
As far as the provision of the Dushanbe residential customers with natural gas is concerned, the source noted that they were currently making preparations for delivering natural gas from the Qizil Tumshuq field to Dushanbe’s Firdavi district via the Qizil Tumshuq-Dushanbe gas pipeline.
According to the Tojiktransgaz top managers, European price of one cubic meter of natural gas for the fourth quarter of 2010 has been set at US$253.86, which is US$3.00 more than the price for the third quarter.
Tajikistan was supposed to buy 250 million cubic meters of natural gas from Uzbekistan this year. The gas prices vary quarterly depending on the world trends and Tajikistan must make prepayments every ten days.
