EU Suggests Upstream Aid to Uzbekistan

A month after Russia promised to invest $12bn in Uzbekistan's oil and gas sector, Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission Vice President for Energy Union, told the international exhibition Uzbekistan Oil & Gas 2016 in Tashkent on May 19, 2016 that the European Union was interested in new gas fields in the Caspian Sea and the eastern Mediterranean region.

The EU offers Uzbekistan its financial resources for joint projects in the fuel and energy sector, he said, emphasising possible funding from the European Investment Bank, with experience of developing stable energy projects. So far it is mostly Russian companies such as Lukoil that are active upstream, while Uzbekistan does not fit many of the EC's stated objectives regarding trade.

He said the Caspian basin countries were an important base of oil and gas resources for the European Union member-states.

Sefcovic offered Uzbekistan the chance to apply to the European Investment Bank which can grant money and offer technical assistance for implementation of energy projects.

EU commissioners Maros Sefcovic (right) and Miguel Arias Canete (Photo credit: (c) EU 2016, EC Audiovisual Service, Molly Riley)

The EIB says it is the world's biggest lender to renewable energy projects and over the last five years it has lent €67bn to energy projects of all kinds, one of them being the southern gas corridor and another being a power interconnector between the central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan and Tadjikistan.

A spokesman told NGE May 23 that the EIB and the EC often worked hand-in-hand on projects and that it lent in line with the EC aspirations, such as security of supply and low-carbon projects, but that it has not yet funded projects in Uzbekistan.

Russian Lukoil is active in Uzbekistan's upstream, some of its gas production there being exported to China.

Azerbaijan desk