DUSHANBE, November 21, 2009, Asia-Plus — Uzbekistan does not block Tajikistan’s access to external power markets as many people say today; it just unilaterally withdrew from unified Central Asian power grid, Georgy Petrov, the head of the hydropower engineering laboratory within the Institute for Water, Hydropower Engineering and Ecology Problems of the Academy of Sciences of Tajikistan, said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
“Turkmenistan also pulled out of the unified CA power grid, Kazakhs are also going to withdraw,” said the expert, “Tajikistan is also going to launch the South-North power grid. The problem is that all these actions are unilateral.”
According to him, the region’s countries ought to find ways to resume operation of the unified power grid rather then seek those guilty for collapse of the power line and complain to international community of that. “Moreover, nobody can prove anything and nobody will be punished,” Petrov said.
“The problems is that the unified CA power grid has gradually become uncontrollable since the unified control center was replaced with the coordination control center,” said Petrov, “The countries, including Tajikistan, have begun siphoning off electricity from the grid without proper authorizations.”
Anyway, the countries of the region ought to try to sit at negotiating table to discuss the power grid functioning terms, though it will be very difficult to do this.”
