Kyrgyzstan to buy electricity from Russia

Kyrgyzstan government is set to reach an agreement with Russia to import 875 million kilowatt/hours of power in 2023-24, an amount equivalent to more than 5 percent of annual national consumption, according to a senior energy official said on Thursday.

This agreement is part of a broader stated plan by Kyrgyzstan to import up to 2.2 billion Kilowatt/hour of electricity this year.

Kyrgyzstan has turned this year so far to its nearer neighbors to top up supplies, as it paid $4 million to import 138.6 million kilowatt/hours of electricity from Kazakhstan in January.

A month later, the country has begun to receive deliveries of electricity from Turkmenistan under a deal to import 1.6 billion kilowatt/hours from that country.

“The energy consumed by the residential sector … has grown consistently and rapidly, tripling during the 2000-2010 period and more than quadrupling between 2010 and 2019,” the International Renewable Energy Agency stated.

The energy sector represents 4 percent of GDP and 16 percent of industrial production, and hydropower accounts for two-thirds of energy production. Kyrgyzstan exploits coal and some oil and gas, but most hydrocarbons are imported.

Energy sector ties with China have been strengthened in recent years, and China financed several key Kyrgyz development projects. Kyrgyzstan also became a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) in 2015.

The Kyrgyz Republic is located in Central Asia and is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the south and China to the east.