DUSHANBE, February 4, 2014, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan has reportedly reduced natural gas production.
According to the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources (MoEWR), Tajikistan produced only 4 million cubic meters of natural gas last year, which is 63.6 percent fewer than in 2012.
An official source at a MoEWR says the considerable reduction in natural gas productions in Tajikistan has resulted from exhaustion of the country’s exploitable natural gas deposits.
Gazprom International, which is an affiliate of Russia’s state-controlled company Gazprom, Canada’s Tethys Petroleum Limited (Tethys), Tajikistan-Switzerland JV Somon Oil and Tajikistan-Austria JV Petroleum Sughd have been exploring natural gas deposits in Tajikistan in recent years.
Gazprom now has licenses to explore two oil-and-gas reserves in Tajikistan: Sariqamish and the Western Shohambari.
Tethys, which was one of the first oil and gas companies to work in Tajikistan, negotiated the First Production Sharing Contract (PSC) for the large Bokhtar area in the southwest region of the country.
Signed in 2008, the 25-year Bokhtar PSC covers a total area of approximately 35,000 square kilometers. Tethys announced in July 2012 that it received an updated independent Resource Report for its Tajikistan assets. According to the report, the estimated gross unrisked mean recoverable resources are reportedly 27.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE).
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.
