Uzbekneftegaz to approve investment projects in July
By Kamila Aliyeva
The Uzbek national company, Uzbekneftegaz, plans to approve its portfolio of investment projects for the next 10 years in July.
“Foreign investors are planned to be involved in the implementation of the largest of them. In addition, Uzbekneftegaz has already started working on a concept for the long-term development of the oil and gas industry with the involvement of international consulting companies. In total, investment projects worth over $ 9 billion are being implemented in the country's oil and gas industry,” a source in the company said.
Investments in the oil and gas sector are considered to be the most liquid among long-term projects, therefore, more than half of all attracted funds to the economy of the country fall on this sphere, according to the source, podrobno.uz reported.
For example, if in 2016 the volume of capital investments in oil and gas amounted to $2.9 billion, in 2017 - $3.6 billion, he noted.
The construction of the Jizzakh oil refinery complex and a plant for the production of synthetic liquid fuel (GTL) are among the significant projects for the oil and gas industry for the near future, according to the source.
The refinery complex will be able to process up to 5 million tons of crude oil per year with 4.7 million tons of oil products, including diesel and aviation fuel, gasoline, petroleum bitumen, liquefied petroleum gas. As for the GTL plant, according to Uzbek experts, it will become one of the largest in the world and will specialize in processing gas and producing synthetic liquid fuels using a unique technology.
To date, the share of Uzbekneftegaz in the gross domestic product is about 15 percent - the fifth part of the state budget revenues is formed due to the company's activities. Its capacity allows producing about 70 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 8 million tons of liquid hydrocarbons per year.
Nevertheless, due to the depletion of reserves and technological losses, the production of hydrocarbons in the country over the last 15 years has fallen significantly. According to official statistics, the production of natural gas in Uzbekistan in 2017 amounted to 56.4 billion cubic meters showing an increase of 0.5 percent compared to 2016, oil - 806,000 tons (a decrease of 6.3 percent).
Russia and China remain the main export markets for Uzbek gas. Also, small shipments are made to neighboring countries. In Russia, the “blue fuel” goes through the Bukhara-Ural and Central Asia-Center gas pipelines. In China, gas flows along the three strings of the Central Asia-China gas pipeline.
---
Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva
Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz