DUSHANBE, August 6, 2009, Asia-Plus — On Wednesday August 5, Prime Minister Oqil Oqilov accompanied by a number senior representatives from relevant ministries and organizations of Tajikistan visited the Sariqamish gas field in the Shahrinav district to get acquainted with the pace of work of exploration work carried out there by closed joint-stock company (CJSC) Gazprom Zarubezhneftegaz.
Yekaterina Kozhevnikova, a spokeswoman for the representative office of Gazprom Zarubezhneftegaz in Dushanbe, said that specialists from Gazprom Zarubezhneftegaz had informed Mr. Oqilov and Tajik officials of the pace of implementation of the project for exploration of the Sariqamish gas field.
During the meeting, it was noted that the project had entered an active phase. 120 people, with 60 percent of them being citizens of Tajikistan, are currently involved in the project. The exploration work was launched on June 24 and more than 20 percent of work has been carried out to this date.
Tajik premier noted that the project being implemented by Gazprom is of significant importance for Tajikistan and promised all possible assistance from the Tajik government, the spokeswoman said.
Gazprom Zarubezhneftegaz is an affiliate of Russia’s state-controlled gas company Gazprom.
Cooperation between the Tajik government and Gazprom is regulated by a long-term (till 2028) agreement on strategic cooperation in the gas industry signed between Gazprom and Tajikistan’s Ministry of Energy in Dushanbe on May 15, 2003 and a memorandum of intent on launching joint Tajik-Russian enterprises of March 28, 2006. Gazprom has been working in Tajikistan on providing the beginning of geological explorations since July 2006.
Gazprom has received licenses from the Tajik government to explore four oil-and-gas reserves in Tajikistan: Rengan; Sargazon; Sariqamish; and the Western Shaambari.
According to Gazprom, the Rengan field, located in the Roudaki district, 20 kilometers from the Tajik capital, has possible gas reserves of 35 billion cubic meters. As it had been reported earlier, the Sargazon field, located in Khatlon’s Danghara district, some 150 kilometers from Dushanbe, has possible reserves of 30 billion cubic meters.
According to expert estimates, the aggregate raw-materials resources of the oil and gas bearing areas in Tajikistan amount to about 1,000 billion tons of reference fuel. At the same time, production work at oil and gas fields require considerable expenditure, since hydrocarbon deposits occur at depths ranging from 6.5 to 8 kilometers.
