Russian Gas Supplies to Uzbekistan Jump 15% to 6.48 BCM

Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) — Russia delivered more natural gas to Uzbekistan in 2025 than at any point since supplies began — and the infrastructure underpinning that flow is already being engineered to handle more than three times the current volume.

Gazprom's annual report confirmed that natural gas deliveries to Uzbekistan reached 6.48 billion cubic metres (BCM) in 2025, up 15% from 5.64 BCM in 2024 — an increase of approximately 840 million cubic metres year-on-year. By the fourth quarter of 2025, supplies were running at the maximum technical capacity of the transit route.

The growth was driven entirely by throughput on the Central Asia–Centre trunk pipeline, which carries Russian gas southward through Kazakhstan in reverse mode. That single corridor is now operating flat out — a physical constraint that frames the urgency of the infrastructure upgrades in the pipeline.

A Contract Running Below Its Ceiling

The 15% increase, while significant, still leaves Uzbekistan drawing considerably less gas than its contract with Gazprom provides for. The agreement, signed in June 2023 with deliveries beginning in October of that year, stipulates annual supply volumes of 7.7 BCM — meaning actual 2025 deliveries of 6.48 BCM represent roughly 84% of the contracted ceiling. Gazprom indicated in October 2025 that the contract remains active and that scope exists for further volume increases.

The Capacity Expansion Question

The most consequential dimension of the story lies not in 2025 figures but in the modernisation plans for Uzbekistan's main gas transmission system reported in February 2024. That project, if completed, would increase daily import capacity from Russia from 9 million to 32 million cubic metres — a more than threefold expansion that would bring the theoretical annual import ceiling to well above 11 BCM.

Such a transformation would fundamentally reorient Uzbekistan's energy balance toward Russian supply, at a moment when the country faces structural domestic gas shortfalls driven by declining legacy field output and rapidly rising residential and industrial demand.

Regional Picture

Uzbekistan is not alone in deepening its Russian gas dependency. Gazprom reported that combined deliveries to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan rose 22.2% in 2025, while exports to Georgia grew 40.4%. In June 2024, Gazprom formalised gas supply agreements with Kyrgyzstan and secured transit arrangements with Kazakhstan for Russian gas moving toward Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan through 2040 — locking in the regional supply architecture for the next fifteen years.

Together, the volume growth, the maxed-out pipeline capacity in Q4 2025, the below-ceiling contract utilisation, and the planned threefold expansion of import infrastructure point in one direction: Uzbekistan's dependence on Russian gas is not a temporary bridging measure but a structural feature of its energy system for the foreseeable future.