DUSHANBE, July 27, Asia-Plus — Visit of a Tajik government delegation led by Energy and Industries Minister Sherali Gulov to Turkmenistan has resulted in signing of a protocol on Tajikistan’s intention to purchase 1 billion kWh of electricity from Turkmenistan from October 2007 to April 2008, Sharifkhon Samiyev, the head of Barqi Tojik (Tajik electric systems) power holding, announced at a news conference in Dushanbe on July 26.
According to him, negotiations were successful but the sides have to tackle a number of technical problems that arose after Turkmenistan withdrew from the Central Asian regional power grid.
“I mean rehabilitation of a power-transmission line linking power systems of Turkmenistan to the Uzbek ones,” Samiyev said, noting that this problem is expected to be resolved soon. In the near future, working groups of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will visit Tashkent to discuss this issue, according to him.
Samiyev noted that Turkmen specialists are ready to rehabilitate the section of the regional power grid in the territory of Uzbekistan.
He added that they had also reached an agreement on importing 902 million kWh of electricity from Uzbekistan and 302 million kWh of electricity from Kyrgyzstan this winter. In all, an electricity deficiency in the winter period amounts to 3.2 billion kWh.
“Besides importing electricity from neighboring countries, we also plan to increase generation of electricity inside the country,” said Samiyev, “It will be done due to reintroduction of the Yovon thermal electric power station into operation as well as increase in generation of electricity by the Dushanbe heat and power plant.” All these measures are taken in order to avoid the possible electricity shortages this winter, he said.
The Barqi Tojik top manager noted that over the first six months of this year, Tajikistan’s hydropower plants had generated7.8 billion kWh of electricity, which is 64 million kWh more than in the same period of last year.
He also said that in May-June this year, Tajikistan supplied 360 million kWh of electrical power to Uzbekistan and 21.4 million kWh of electricity to Afghanistan.
According to him, Tajikistan daily supplies from 8 to 10 megawatt/hour of electricity to Afghanistan.
