Kyrgyzstan has affirmed its growing ties with Russia’s Gazprom during a ceremony to mark the launch of an overhauled section of a cross-country gas pipeline. 

Top Kyrgyz officials met with the state-owned company’s chief Alexei Miller in Bishkek last week to unveil a renovated 111-km stretch of the Bukhara – Tashkent – Bishkek – Almaty (BTBA) gas trunk line The Soviet-era pipe carries gas from fields in southern Uzbekistan to supply-deprived areas in Kyrgyzstan and southern Kazakhstan. The pumping capacity of the section in question has now been doubled to around 3.9 bcm per year, Gazprom said in a press release on August 29.

Miller noted that the renovation of the BTBA line had “great significance” to Central Asia as a whole and would help ensure supply security both in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The pipeline was built during the late 1960s and early 1970s but fell into disrepair following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Gazprom began modernising the line in August 2015 and originally aimed to complete it before the end of 2016.

Total control

Gazprom has dominated Kyrgyzstan ever since it purchased the country’s grid operator Kyrgyzgaz in mid-2013 for a symbolic US$1. Under the deal, the Russian giant took on the utility’s US$40 million of debt and pledged to invest at least 20 billion rubles (US$346 million) in repairing and expanding the national gas network. Kyrgyzgaz was later rebranded as Gazprom Kyrgyzstan. The Russian supplier now serves all of Kyrgyzstan’s gas, which it buys from neighbouring Uzbekistan.

The Kyrgyz government welcomed Gazprom’s takeover of its gas grid as a means of safeguarding against supply cuts and diplomatic pressure. Previously Bishkek had bought gas directly from Tashkent, which under the rule of late president Islam Karimov often used these supplies as a political tool. Uzbek authorities were able to exploit Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan’s dependence to charge higher prices, causing them to accrue debts. This eventually led to Uzbekistan halting deliveries to Tajikistan in 2012 and Kyrgyzstan in 2014. Now, with Gazprom in charge of purchasing, supply disruptions are no longer a problem.

Source: Newsbase