Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- On 28 June 2019 a briefing on the theme: “Problems and prospects of the oil and gas industry of Uzbekistan, as well as issues of providing the population with energy resources” was held with the participation of the management of Uzbekneftegaz.

The event was held at the Agency of Information and Mass Communications under the Presidential Administration of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

For the further development of the oil and gas industry, the expansion of exploration and production of hydrocarbons is envisaged. To this end, work on the most promising areas in the Bukhara-Khiva, Ustyurt, Surkhandarya, and Ferghana regions has been intensified due to internal resources.

Geological exploration on little-studied investment blocks is also being conducted jointly with leading world oil and gas companies. Partners include Socar (Azerbaijan), British Petroleum (UK), Total (France), LUKOIL, GAZPROM and TATNEFT (Russia), Mubadala (UAE), ONGC (India).

Given the growth in hydrocarbon consumption, it is planned to invest US$9.8 billion in the industry during 2019-2030, including US$3.5 billion for geological exploration and US$6.3 billion  to increase the volume of natural gas production.

It is planned to modernize the trunk gas transmission system with the introduction of a system for monitoring and managing natural gas flows (SCADA). To this end, JSC "Uzbekneftegaz" is working to attract loans from international financial institutions for more than US$1.5 billion in 2019-2025.

The petrochemical and chemical industry is actively developing, aimed at producing products with high added value. A project to expand the Shurtan Gas Chemical Plant in conjunction with the processing of naphtha of the GTL project (value added +480 million dollars) is at the implementation stage. As a result, an additional 280 thousand tons of new grades of polyethylene and 100 thousand tons of polypropylene are expected to be produced.

The project continues to produce 1.5 million tons of synthetic liquid fuel using GTL technology with the release of 743.5 thousand tons of diesel fuel, 311 thousand tons of jet fuel, 431 thousand tons of naphtha and 50 thousand tons of liquefied gas.

The implementation of these and other tasks will allow by 2030 to increase the deep processing of natural gas by 6 times.