Tuesday, August 14, 2012 -
Kazakhstan has agreed to supply 300 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas to Kyrgyzstan, the Kazakh ambassador to Bishkek said on Tuesday.
Kazakhstan will provide the gas at $95 per 1000 cubic meters, for a total gas bill of $28.5 million, Ambassador Beibit Isabaev said at a meeting in Bishkek held ahead of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s state visit to Kyrgyzstan scheduled for mid-month.
“This is more than $30 cheaper than gas from Uzbekistan,” the Knews.kg news agency reported Isabaev as saying.
Kazakhstan would also like to discuss extending a power line – being constructed in Kyrgyzstan by a Chinese company – to the southern city Almaty, Isabaev said.
“Kyrgyzstan is in cooperation with a Chinese company which is building the Datka-Kemin transmission line,” he said. “We are keen to go ahead and close the ring, to build the Datka-Kemin-Almaty transmission line. Thus…Kyrgyzstan will be able to export electricity through the grid of Kazakhstan further into the South Asian countries.”
Kazakhstan, though enormously wealthy in gas and oil reserves, often has trouble bringing electricity to its southern cities due to the immense size of the country. Cities – including the business capital of the country, Almaty, and Shymkent – are reliant on importing power from Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.