Uzbekistan plans to raise natural gas exports to 14.50 billion cubic metres this year from 12.65 billion cubic metres in 2006, a senior energy official said on Wednesday.

Officials also said a number of top Russian oil companies were in talks with the government to explore new projects in the Central Asian state.

Uzbekistan is a big regional gas producer. The former Soviet nation of 27 million consumes most of its gas itself but it wants to raise production and export more.

Shavkat Mazhitov, deputy head of the state oil and gas company Uzbekneftegas, told reporters that 13 billion cubic metres would be exported to Russia and Kazakhstan this year.

Last week Uzbekistan agreed with Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to upgrade existing gas pipelines connecting Central Asia and Russia, a move expected to help Uzbekistan eventually achieve higher exports.

Russia is the main export destination for Uzbekistan, whose pipelines are controlled by Russia’s Gazprom . But Tashkent is looking at new routes too, agreeing last month to build a new pipeline to China at an unspecified date.

This year Uzbekistan plans to produce 65 billion cubic metres of gas, up from last year’s 62.74 billion.

Separately, Uzbekneftegas’s top geologist Mutalib Nurmatov said Russian companies Rosneft , LUKOIL and Stroitransgas-oil were in talks with the Uzbek government on exploring six oil fields in the Central Asian state.

"They (Lukoil and Rosneft) are studying the papers at the moment and are due to give their answer in a few days, whether they are going to work on these fields," Nurmatov told reporters.

As for the third Russian company, he said Uzbekistan planned to finalise an exploration licence involving two fields for Stroitransgas-oil by July.

About half of Uzbek exploration sites are tapped by companies that include LUKOIL, Gazprom, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), Malaysian state oil and gas firm Petronas [PETR.UL] and others.