Shavkat Mazhitov, deputy head of the state energy company Uzbekneftegas, said that natural gas output will grow to 16 billion cubic metres this year from 14.7 billion in 2007.

"We had a harsh winter and lost the pace of growth a little bit," he told reporters. "But at the moment we are recouping losses and have achieved better results than planned. ... That’s why we will export as much as we had planned."

Uzbekistan, along with Central Asia’s top gas exporter Turkmenistan, uses a Soviet-era pipeline network operated by Russian gas monopoly Gazprom for its exports.

Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan as well as Kazakhstan, which acts largely as a transit nation, teamed up earlier this year to start charging Gazprom more for their supplies from next year, seeking to bring prices closer to European levels.

Mazhitov could not name the price for next year’s shipments but said Uzbekistan would export a total of 12 billion cubic metres to Russia this year, while the remainder will go to neighbouring nations including Kazakhstan.

Last year Russian shipments were 10.5 billion cubic metres.

Gas production in Uzbekistan will rise to 67.8 billion cubic metres compared to last year’s 65.3 billion, Mazhitov said.

Although Russia remains its biggest export destination, Uzbekistan is studying new export routes and earlier this year agreed to take part in a new pipeline to energy-hungry China.

Russia’s LUKOIL is a big foreign player on the Uzbek energy market, earmarking $5.5 billion in gas exploration investment in a country where it plans to produce 16 billion cubic metres of natural gas per year by 2015.

LUKOIL is part of a consortium developing an Aral Sea production sharing project in Uzbekistan. Other project parters include Malaysia’s Petronas [PETR.UL], China’s CNPC and Korea National Oil Corporation.