Uzbekistan cuts gas supply to Tajikistan without notification

Uzbekistan cut supplies of natural gas to Tajikistan on Wednesday, Tajik Foreign Ministry spokesman Davlat Nazriev said. “TajikTransGaz applied to Uztransgaz to sign an agreement on supplying natural gas in 2012, but the Uzbek party postponed the signing of the contract,” Nazriev said. Nazreiv added that on December 22, Tajik Deputy Prime Minister Murodali Alimardon sent an official letter on signing the agreement to Uzbek First Deputy Prime Minister Rusatm Azimov. In his reply, Azimov wrote that the issue of supplying Uzbek natural gas had not been resolved with the main buyers, i.e. China and Russia, so “the signing of the agreement between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan does not seem possible.”   “Today the Uzbek ambassador in Dushanbe received a letter from Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon to Isalm Karimov,” said Nazriev. At the end of November 2011, Ustrangaz raised the price for natural gas for Tajikistan to $311 per thousand cubic meters. According to the agreement for 2011, Uzbekistan should have supplied 180 million cubic meters, but Tajikistan received only 160 million.   Most of the natural gas Tajikistan imports from Uzbekistan is used by its aluminum plant.