Uzbeks Hold Key to Turkmen-Tajik Energy Deal

Tajikistan’s hopes of buying electricity from Turkmenistan to help solve its acute energy shortage can only be realised if Uzbekistan – which lies between the two countries – gives its assent. Tajik energy experts insist the Uzbeks, too, would benefit from such a triangular energy arrangement.



Turkmen officials have said they are ready to export over two billion kilowatt-hours of electricity to Tajikistan annually, enough to cover that country’s winter energy shortage, according to an Avesta news agency report on February 26. The condition is that Uzbekistan must repair transit powerlines.



Although Tajikistan has powerful hydroelectric stations feeding off its mountain river systems, it runs short of energy over the winter when there is less water available.



Turkmenistan has so much cheap natural gas that it generate enough electricity to supply its own population free of charge, and still export to places like Tajikistan.



In the mid-Nineties, after Turkmenistan dropped out of the unified Central Asian electricity grid of Soviet times, the two high-power transmission lines going through Uzbekistan fell into disrepair.



Acoording to Jura Boboev, deputy head of the hydroelectrical construction department at the Tajik power company Barqi Tojik, it would only take two weeks to repair these lines and start importing electricity from Turkmenistan.



But persuading Uzbekistan to help the process along will be a difficult task. The country refused to sell Tajikistan electricity this winter, and has been obstructing a plan to bring Kyrgyz electricity to Tajikistan via Uzbek power lines for several years now.



Uzbekistan’s official line is that its energy grid is in a fragile state and unable to cope with overloads, but many analysts in Tajikistan suspect the real reason for its reluctance is the traditionally fraught relationship between the two governments.



Akram Suleimanov, Tajikistan’s deputy minister for energy and industry in Tajikistan, would like to see the Central Asian energy grid restored for the sake of the common good. He also notes that Uzbekistan loads up its power lines over the summer when it imports Tajik electricity over the summer, so it should logically be possible to reverse the current in winter.



Tajik energy officials are still hopeful that a resolution can be found and Barqi Tojik chief Sharifkhon Samiev is visiting Tashkent, this week to negotiate with Uzbek energy officials.



Boboev argues that trilateral cooperation would lead to efficiency savings, such as electricity swaps where western areas of Uzbekistan could buy power from neighbouring Turkmenistan, and the Uzbeks would then supply equivalent amounts of energy to Tajikistan.



(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)