Uzbekistan’s National Holding Company /NKhK/ is planning to boost gas exports by 14.6% to 14.5 billion cubic meters this year, NKhK deputy chairman Shavkat Mazhitov told an international oil and gas conference on Thursday. The conference is part of the annual exhibition titled "Oil and Gas of Uzbekistan."

Earlier this month, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov of Turkmenistan, Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, and Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan signed a declaration on joint development of gas transportation facilities in Central Asia.

Mazhitov said Russia and Kazakhstan would import 13 billion cubic meters of Uzbek gas this year, and Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan - 1.5 billion cubic meters, Itar-TASS reported.

Gas production in Uzbekistan is expected to increase to 65 billion cubic meters in 2007 versus 62.74 billion cubic meters in 2006.

Uzbekistan has 202 hydrocarbon fields. Half of them are being developed, more than one-third are readied for extraction and the rest are still surveyed.

The republic, a major gas producer in the Commonwealth of Independent States, is among the world’s ten top gas producers.

The Turkmen gas at present is exported to Russia through the Central Asia- Center pipeline, whose annual capacity does not exceed 50 billion cubic meters.

Russia and Turkmenistan are strategic partners in the gas and oil sectors. Turkmenistan is second largest gas producer and exporter in the post-Soviet space after Russia.

In terms of potential reserves of gas, estimated at 222 trillion cubic meters, Turkmenistan ranks fifth in the world.

The Russian and Turkmen presidents signed a 25-year gas cooperation agreement in Moscow in April 2003.

The contract for 2007-2007 envisions annual supplies of 50 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas. The price should remain unchanged until the end of 2009.

At the talks in Ashgabat In February 2007, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and the leadership of the Turkmen oil and gas sector confirmed their commitments to the earlier contract of gas supplies to Russia until 2028.