Kazakhstan to halt gas exports next winter, Ifax reports

Kazakhstan plans to stop natural gas exports next winter to ensure its domestic market is fully supplied, a senior executive of state gas company QazaqGaz was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

GazaqGaz’s deputy chief executive, Arman Kasenov, told a meeting that stopping exports was the only way to avoid a domestic deficit, Interfax reported.

Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s biggest oil producer, exports natural gas to Russia and China. It decreased exports to 4.6 billion cubic metres (bcm) last year, from 7.2 bcm the previous year, also citing growing domestic consumption.

This year Kazakhstan plans to start using natural gas instead of coal to provide power and heating for Almaty, its biggest city.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Olzhas Auyezov Editing by David Goodman)