Kazakhstan’s
President Nursultan Nazarbayev has ordered the construction of a new national
gas pipeline stretching from Kyzylorda in the south of Kazakhstan to the Kazakh
capital, Astana.
“Only nine
(of Kazakhstan’s) regions are currently gasified – mainly in the western and
southern regions, while the central and northern regions of the country are
still without gas. This makes it necessary to build a gas pipeline,” Nazarbayev
told a joint session of the Houses of Parliament on March 5.
Gas
production in the country has annually increased from 8 to 52 billion cubic
meters since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, a figure that will continue
to grow on a yearly basis, according to Nazarbayev.
Nazarbayev
stressed that the Kazakh government must attract investment funds, including
from international financial institutions to complete the project, adding that
the project should be implemented within the next 18 months.
The project
is expected to see a ten-fold reduction of harmful emissions in the atmosphere
to 35,000 tonnes of solids in Astana.
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/kazakhstan-plans-new-gas-pipeline-kyzylorda-astana/