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Tashkent puts an AI on 106,000 energy workers

A day after the energy minister was dismissed, Uzbekistan has a new centre monitoring the whole sector workforce against ten indicators. The loss figures behind the decision came out with it.

A 20% reserve margin appears in a Kazakh plan

The cabinet put its energy and utilities national project on the table on Tuesday morning. Inside it sits a target for spare capacity, with a date on it.

Dushanbe says the Russian petrol ban should not reach it

Russia supplies 72.3% of the fuel Tajikistan burns. Its energy minister says the indicative balance has recently run into difficulty, and that the export ban extended last week should not in principle touch deliveries made under an intergovernmental agreement.

The pipeline restarts after production halved

CPC began taking Kazakh crude again on Sunday evening. By then national output was running at about half its June average, roughly twice the drop that had been reported all week.

Kyrgyzstan rewrites its fuel subsidy for a wider border

Moscow will hold its gasoline export ban to the end of the year. Bishkek is redrafting its subsidy rules so that supported fuel can arrive at any crossing point, from any third country.

A fifth of the country’s output, gone in a day

Bishkek lines up fuel from four directions

At a briefing in Bishkek on 21 July the energy minister, Altynbek Rysbekov, named the sources now filling Kyrgyzstan’s tanks: a first consignment dispatched from China by road, Belarusian fuel already arriving by rail, Kazakh fuel oil at 15,000 to 20,000 tons a month, and a tolling arrangement with Uzbekistan. Russia still supplies more than 90% of Kyrgyzstan’s gasoline; in this particular list it appears as the corridor Belarusian fuel travels through.

A $25 million refinery signs into Kyrgyzstan’s fuel gap

The cabinet signed an investment agreement on 20 July with the company Central Asian Energy to build and operate a refinery in Kochkor-Ata: $25 million, capacity above 450,000 tons of products a year, with a first stage due by the end of 2026. Construction has already begun.

Uzbekistan’s grid runs a fifth record day

Daily consumption hit 293.4 million kilowatt-hours on 17 July, 7.6% above last summer’s maximum, and the energy ministry counted five consecutive record days through the weekend. On Monday four Tashkent districts were warned of possible short outages; relief arrives with the heat easing from Tuesday.

Two lines tripped, and Kyrgyzstan went dark at 40 degrees

Just after 14:00 on Friday, the 220 kV lines running Kara-Balta to Glavnaya and Glavnaya to Shu disconnected at once, and automatic load shedding cut power to most of Bishkek and to districts across four regions at the peak of a 40-degree afternoon. Supply was largely back by late afternoon; the cause of the double trip is being established.

Orenburg is back to a quarter of its normal intake from Kazakhstan's Karachaganak

Two weeks after a drone strike forced Kazakhstan to cut oil output at its giant Karachaganak field, the Russian plant that processes its gas is still running far below capacity. Kazakh officials say Orenburg is taking just 28% of its usual volume, and the Caspian Pipeline Consortium is cutting July exports 6% as a result.

Uzbekistan spent $725 million importing gas in five months as its own output slid

Uzbekistan's natural-gas imports rose 84% year on year to $724.7 million in January to May, the state statistics committee reported, while its gas exports to China fell. A country that shipped gas abroad a decade ago now buys it to keep the lights on.

The gasoline Kazakhstan might send Russia would be made from Russian oil

Reuters reported that Kazakhstan agreed to ship 50,000 tons of gasoline to Russia as humanitarian aid. Astana's energy ministry says no formal request has arrived, and the only fuel it might send would be refined from Russian feedstock. That detail decides how to read the story.

Kyrgyzstan asks six countries to keep its petrol flowing

Bishkek has sent official requests for stable fuel supplies to Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Belarus and Russia itself. A country that buys about 90% of its petrol from one supplier is now shopping in every direction at once.

Uzbekistan’s petrol price hits a record as the regional fuel squeeze spreads

AI-92 petrol on Uzbekistan’s commodity exchange reached 13.9 million soums a ton on 29 June, about $1,160 and the highest level ever recorded. The jump lands while Russia restricts fuel exports, Kazakhstan’s biggest refinery sits in maintenance, and Uzbekistan’s own output keeps falling.

Mongolia’s energy workers begin an indefinite strike, testing a grid that leans on imports

From 8 a.m. on 30 June, energy-sector workers across Mongolia walked out for an indefinite strike after wage talks broke down, their union federation said. Only emergency crews stayed on, leaving a power system that already runs on aging plants and imported electricity under added strain.

A $1.4 billion Gulf wind farm breaks ground in southern Kazakhstan, aimed at the lights and the data centres

Construction began on 29 June on a 1 gigawatt wind farm in Kazakhstan’s Zhambyl region, led by the Emirati developer Masdar at a cost of $1.4 billion. It is meant to ease southern Kazakhstan’s power shortages, and the same day Masdar signed up to explore round-the-clock clean power for the country’s data centres.

Kazakhstan is Europe’s third-biggest oil supplier now. Its own output is falling

Kazakhstan was the European Union’s third-largest supplier of crude oil in the first quarter of 2026, Eurostat data show, behind only the United States and Norway. It is a prize won from Russia’s exit, and a perch Kazakhstan may struggle to hold, because its own production is sliding.

A gas superpower cannot keep the lights on in Mary, so it fired the officials

Turkmenistan holds some of the world’s largest gas reserves. In its Mary Region this month the power went out almost daily in 40-degree heat, a rare street protest followed, and the state’s answer was to dismiss local officials. The lights are still flickering.

Before the reactors, the wires: Central Asia loses up to a fifth of its power in aging grids

While Astana and Tashkent pour concrete for nuclear plants, the EDB used its Almaty meeting to point at the cheaper problem underneath: aging generation and grids that lose as much as 20% of the electricity they carry.