THE KYRGYZ REPUBLIC: THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF INTERSTATE COOPERATION IN THE ENERGY SPHERE

Abstract

Its rich water resources (50 billion cu m of surface runoff a year, 13 billion cu m of potential ground water resources, 1,745 billion cu m of lake water, and 650 billion cu m of glaciers) set the Kyrgyz Republic apart from its neighbors. The region’s largest rivers (the Naryn, 807 km; Chu, 380 km, Talas, 200 km, Saryjaz, Kara Darya, Chatkal, and others that belong to the Syr Darya and Amu Darya basins) form their runoffs in Kyrgyzstan. Its hydropower potential is estimated at 162 billion kWh,or 38 percent of Central Asia’s total; it has not yet been fully tapped: the level does not exceed 8 to 9 percent.1 The annual hydropower potential of the smaller rivers is between 5 and 8 billion kWh;today the national economy uses only 3 percent. It is believed that non-traditional renewable energy sources may produce 800 million tons of standard fuel. So far, little has been done here either to ex-ploit them to their maximum capacity.
 The republic’s hypothetical coal reserves are assessed at over 2 billion tons; the undiscovered reserves of oil and gas are equal to about 289 million tons of standard fuel; today, only a fraction of this wealth is used. Between 1991 and 2006, oil production dropped 2.2-fold and natural gas 3.8-fold.
n the whole, locally produced oil and gas cover a meager 5 percent or even less of the republic’s needs. This means that it completely depends on Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan for fuel.
 In the last fifteen years, the Kyrgyz Republic, which has been building up its statehood and moving toward a market economy, tried to maintain its fuel-and-energy balance (FEB) in the midst of an eco-nomic slump and disrupted interstate economic relations. This was not easy: in 2005, the production of fuel and energy resources dropped to 52 percent, energy imports to 22 percent; energy consump-tion to 90.4 percent, and energy exports to 27 percent of the 1990 level.
 An analysis of the macroeconomic indicators and power consumption has demonstrated that, on the whole, power consumption rates declined slower than the GDP rates and was accompanied by a steadily decreasing electric capacity of the GDP to 43 percent; per capita power and electricity con-sumption dropped to 28 and 70 percent, while the GDP’s electric capacity decreased to 106 percent against the 1990 level.
 Disrupted interstate relations in the energy sphere are responsible for the structural shifts in the republic’s FEB: the republic’s coal imports have dropped from 2.9 million tons in 1990 to 981 thou-sand tons in 2005, or 33 percent of the 1990 level; between 1990 and 2005, coal mining decreased from 3.74 million tons to 335.3 thousand tons, or 11-fold. Today, the heat and power plants, local boiler houses, and population in general are exposed to an acute shortage of fuel. About 60 percent of the total amount of coal the country uses goes to the energy sector to produce electric and heat energy.
 Power industry is the cornerstone of the republic’s budget; its share in gross industrial output increased from 4.2 percent in 1990 to 20.4 percent in 2005. Power production is growing faster than that of other energy resources: from 13.3 billion kWh in 1990 to 14.48 billion kWh in 2006. The share of hydropower stations in power production increased from 67 to 94 percent, while the share of heat and power plants dropped from 32 to 6 percent in 2006. This happened because energy fuel prices skyrocketed, while fuel deliveries from neighboring countries became sporadic. There are 17 power stations in the republic with a total installed capacity of 3,680 MW; this number includes 15 hydro-power stations with the installed capacity of 2,950 MW and two heat and power plants of 730 MW;the share of the hydropower stations in the republic’s FEB is 81 percent; of heat and power plants,17 percent; and of small hydropower stations, 1.3 percent.
 Energy is transferred and distributed via more than 70 thousand km of 0.4¸500 kV power trans-mission lines; 546 km of which are lines of 500 kV; 1,714 km, 220 kV, and 4,380 km, 110 kV; there are also about 490 transformer substations of 35¸500 kV and with a total capacity of over 8 million kW.
he republic’s energy system is connected with the energy systems of its neighbors through the trunk system-forming power transmission lines; together they belong to an energy ring of 500-220 kV of the United Energy System of Central Asia (UES CA). This brings electric power to practically all corners of the republic.