Gazprom has increased the volume of natural gas purchases from Turkmenistan in the first half of 2020.
According to the Interfax news agency’s Wednesday report, The Russian energy company purchased 1.7 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas over the six months of this year, which exceeds the figure for the same period last year (1.2 billion cubic meters) by 500 million cubic meters.
The volume of gas purchases from Kazakhstan decreased from 5.4 billion cubic meters to 4.1 billion. In addition, since the beginning of 2020 (at least until the end of June) Gazprom has stopped buying natural gas from Uzbekistan. In 2019, Gazprom purchased 7.6 billion cubic meters of gas in Uzbekistan, in 2018 - 6.7 billion cubic meters and in 2017 - 7.2 billion cubic meters, according to the report.
In total for six months, Gazprom’s purchases of natural gas from Central Asia fell from 9.9 billion cubic meters (January-June 2019) to 5.8 billion cubic meters.
LUKOIL also announced a decrease in gas production in Uzbekistan following the results of the first quarter. In June, the Russian company's production declined to about 40% of its design capacity, and in August it completely stopped production at one of the projects and stopped exporting gas from Uzbekistan to China.
