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Energy

Uzbekneftegaz expects its gas output to fall 9.5% this year, to 22.8 billion cubic metres

Uzbekneftegaz and its subsidiaries produced about 17 billion cubic metres of gas in January to September and expect 22.8 billion for the year, 9.5% less than the 25.2 billion of 2025, Sukhrob Khamraev, the company’s first deputy chairman for finance, said in an interview with the O’zbekiston 24 channel reported by the business site Spot on Tuesday evening. Monday’s presidential readout printed no output figure.

By CAW Staff7 October 2026
Pipework and valve wheels at a gas compressor station on a desert plateau at dusk, one wheel catching amber light.

Khamraev, whose post covers finance, transformation and privatisation, supplied the figures Mirziyoyev’s readout of 5 October lacked: that page listed five discoveries, 80 wells and 125 million cubic metres of savings and no volume of production. The figure the president’s page left out is the company’s own: 22.8 billion cubic metres. Diesel output ran at 161% of plan over the nine months, with petrol, liquefied gas, jet fuel, polyethylene and other synthetic products above plan, Khamraev said in the same interview, and revenues rose 22% and net profit by 150%, two and a half times, against January to September 2025.

Taxes and budget payments came to 6.9 trillion sum in nine months, and a loan portfolio cut by $385 million lowered interest costs by $18 million, he said, without a profit figure in sum.

The figure the president’s page left out is the company’s own: 22.8 billion cubic metres.

His exploration lines repeat the president’s: 41 investment blocks of 50,000 square kilometres licensed at the start of the year, 3D seismic over about 12,000 square kilometres in 2026 against 18,000 in the previous 15 years, “five times last year’s coverage”, drilling on 17 blocks, five new gas-condensate discoveries, 120 wells planned for the year, 80 drilled by September and 40 in the fourth quarter. The fourth-quarter goal is to reach the full-year 22.8 billion and to meet the other industrial plans in full.

Nationally, the statistics committee’s series, which counts all producers, showed 24.2 billion cubic metres in January to August, 16.3% below the same months of 2025, more in eight months than the company expects in twelve because the rest comes from the foreign operators and joint ventures, Lukoil among them. Khamraev’s series is the company’s own, and its fall for the year is 9.5%.

Mirziyoyev received Lukoil’s founder Vagit Alekperov on 6 October, the presidential press service said as UzA carried it at 18:28. Alekperov reported on the company’s projects in exploration, the development of promising hydrocarbon fields and the retail network, and the two discussed plans to expand the company’s activity in the country, with no figure, field or date in the readout. The US Treasury placed Lukoil under sanctions in October 2025, Spot recalled in its item on the meeting.

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