Uzbekistan's President Demands an Increase in Coal Production

On May 12th, Uzbekistan reported that President Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan held a meeting on energy supply issues on May 11th, calling for an increase in coal production to 6.5 million tons in 2023.The meeting pointed out that since the energy crisis last winter, the Uzbek government has vigorously promoted the "gas to coal" transformation of heating in greenhouse, cement plants, brick factories, kindergartens, schools and hospitals to ease the pressure on natural gas supply. This year, it plans to complete the transformation of 5407 social public facilities such as schools and hospitals, 1147 greenhouses and 250 factories, and the social demand for coal will increase by 50%; However, in the first quarter of this year, the national coal production "ran counter to the trend of demand growth", only 989100 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 14%.

Mi asked relevant units to carefully learn from the lessons of last winter's energy crisis, attach great importance to the work of energy supply assurance this winter, order the minister of mining and geology and relevant state governors to formulate specific work plans, increase the annual output of coal from 5.3 million tons to 6.5 million tons (an increase of 22.6%), and ensure the formation of 2 million tons of coal reserves by the end of November to ensure the supply of coal this winter.

In order to implement the above goals and tasks, the meeting requested to accelerate the construction of the Sargon coal mine, complete and put it into operation as soon as possible, and decided to provide $80 million in financing support to Anglian Coal Mine Company, a subsidiary of "Wumei", to expand the project scale and increase coal production capacity.