Azerbaijan, Baku, March 28 / Trend V. Zhavoronkova, T.Jafarov /
Tajikistan has no alternative to gas supplies from Uzbekistan under the current circumstances, a source at the Tajik Energy and Natural Resources Ministry told Trend on Wednesday.
Uzbekistan will fully stop its gas supplies to Tajikistan from April 1, the country's media reported on Tuesday with reference to Tajiktransgas company. Uzbekistan explains the decision with the shortage of gas in the country and its obligations to supply certain volume of gas to China.
"Tajikistan is not able to buy gas from other country except Uzbekistan," the source told Trend.
The source added that the cancellation of Uzbek gas supplies may result in serious problems in Tajikistan and the gas, imported from Uzbekistan can not be replaced by the supplies from any other country.
The source said that as for other gas exporting countries, for example, Tajikistan has never bought gas from Russia, it has no gas pipeline linking Tajikistan with Iran to make the supplies of gas from this country possible.
Afghanistan might provide Tajikistan with gas, but the issue remains unclear, the other source at the Tajik Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources told Trend on Wednesday.
According to Tajik media, Dushanbe and Tashkent had an agreement on supplies of 200 million cubic meters of gas from Uzbekistan in 2012. But the agreement had a point that only 45 million from the total volume of gas must be guaranteed.
Uzbekistan exported 180 million cubic meters of gas to Tajikistan in 2011.
