DUSHANBE, February 9, 2010, Asia-Plus — Report released by some media that Uzbekistan has allegedly cut natural-gas shipments to Tajikistan by half does not correspondent to the facts, Shavkat Shoimov, deputy director general of Tojiktransgaz (Tajik state natural-gas-distributor), told Asia-Plus today.
“the point is that Uzbekistan supplies gas to Tajikistan not always in equal volumes,” said Shoimov, “For example, three days ago, they supplied 28,000 cubic meters of gas to Tajikistan, while a day after, they reduced gas shipments to 25,000 cubic meters and yesterday, they supplied only 19,000 cubic meters. Anyway, we receive that volume of natural gas, for which we made prepayments.”
He added that Tojiktransgaz would make prepayments for the next ten-day period in the near future.
We will recall that that Tajikistan will buy 250 million cubic meters of natural gas from Uzbekistan this year and the gas price will vary quarterly depending on the world trends. Uzbekistan still set gas price for Tajikistan at the rate of 231 U.S. dollars per 1,000 cubic meters and Tajikistan must make prepayments every ten days.
