Uzbekistan’s significance for European energy security has grown, and there is every indication that it will grow further. For most of the post-Soviet period, and especially under President Islam Karimov from independence in 1991 until his death in 2016, its energy sector was run as a tightly controlled extension of the old Soviet system, which had never been designed for market conditions in the first place. Foreign participation was kept limited, and top-down political control largely subordinated industrial modernization, usually without any serious attempt to measure the cost.
Since 2016, under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, that pattern has begun to shift. The change has been uneven, but it has been real. The authorities have invited new investors, moved into large-scale solar projects, opened the door to nuclear power, and started to adjust the rules and institutions that govern the sector, not always in a fully coherent way but clearly in a different direction from the past. Nevertheless, the state still holds the commanding heights. Domestic gas output has declined, forcing Tashkent to rely more heavily on imports from Russia while maintaining export arrangements with China. In parallel, it has explored regional electricity and connectivity initiatives in order to overcome its reliance on natural gas for electricity generation.
How Uzbekistan manages this mixture of change and continuity will have direct consequences for the resilience of east–west energy flows and for the balance of influence among Russia, China, and Europe in Central Asia, and not only over the short term.
Background: Uzbekistan Retains a Soviet-Style Energy System
During the Karimov period, Uzbekistan’s energy sector remained rooted in its Soviet inheritance and was managed as a centralized, state-controlled system. Ownership of major assets and control over export and transmission infrastructure were concentrated in state entities, above all Uzbekneftegaz, which dominated the oil and gas value chain and acted as the main gatekeeper for foreign participation. As long as this centralized model persisted, Uzbekistan’s potential contribution to European energy diversification remained largely latent and indirect.
Foreign direct investment in hydrocarbons existed, but it was limited in both scope and autonomy. In practice, most cooperation took place through carefully framed agreements with Russian and Chinese state companies, and even those agreements were designed more to preserve supply stability and fiscal flows than to promote modernization. Over time, this pattern produced a sector that functioned, but renewed itself only slowly. By the time of the leadership transition in 2016–2018, many of the inherited structures were still in place, and the accumulated rigidity of the system had become a constraint in its own right.
Karimov’s autocratic style of rule reinforced a political culture in which central directives mattered more than operational initiative or managerial experimentation. Decision making in the energy sector was concentrated in a narrow administrative core, where enterprises such as Uzbekneftegaz, Uztransgaz, and associated processing and distribution units operated within vertically integrated chains. This left little room for competitive pressure. Long-standing production-sharing and service arrangements with companies such as Gazprom, CNPC, and Lukoil were often negotiated with limited competition and under conditions that did not strongly incentivize technology transfer or cost control.
As a result, applied investment in enhanced recovery and infrastructure renewal in key gas fields, including Shurtan and Kokdumalak, lagged behind the sector’s potential. The overall structure remained viable, but it was not particularly adaptive. In contrast to Kazakhstan’s more open approach to Western investors or Turkmenistan’s export-corridor focus, Uzbekistan’s system remained conservative and insulated. This helped preserve control but also limited the scope for growth.
Since President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s coming to power, the authorities have begun to move this system in a more open direction, even if the movement has been uneven. In hydrocarbons, the state still retains the commanding position; in electricity and related segments, however, it has invited a much wider range of foreign partners into large projects. The Samarkand 1 and 2 solar and battery storage projects, led by Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation and Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power, together aim at 1,000 MW of installed solar capacity and substantial storage. These projects are structured on long-term power-purchase agreements with the national grid operator.
In parallel, Uzbekistan has developed a uranium mining joint venture with the French firm Orano in the Navoi region. In contrast with Kazakhstan’s uranium mining industry, Uzbekistan’s production here is largely intended for export as raw material rather than for local processing. These developments have occurred against a background of declining domestic gas output. Reliance on Russian pipeline imports has correspondingly risen; recent arrangements project these imports to reach about 7.7 billion cubic metres per year. All in all, Uzbekistan’s energy sector is starting to shift from a closed, single-template system to a more diversified configuration that still keeps the state at the centre.
Implications: Domestic Shifts with European Energy Consequences
In the near term, the most visible pressure point has been the gas balance. How Tashkent manages this gas balance will influence the stability of east–west corridors and the degree to which European markets can broaden their supplier base in Central Asia. Although Uzbekistan still relies heavily on gas-fired generation for power and heat, domestic gas production has declined from its late-2010s peak. Demand meanwhile has continued to rise. This deficit has produced recurrent supply shortages in winter, as public dissatisfaction with localized outages has broken out in several regions.
To cover the domestic supply gap, Uzbekistan has increased imports from Russia under a series of contracts envisaging not just higher volumes but also their possible further expansion. And this is occurring even as it maintains export commitments to China, seeking to preserve revenues and its reputation as a reliable supplier. This reliance on gas as the main pillar of electricity generation makes the system more vulnerable. It strengthens the case inside the country for diversifying not just international buyers and sellers but also the technologies employed for electricity generation.
The policy response has taken the form of a broad investment program and a gradual reworking of sector rules. For example, the government has adopted ambitious targets for solar and wind capacity and has worked with international financial institutions and private developers to organize competitive tenders for large-scale projects. Gulf-based and Asian companies, including the UAE’s Masdar, have secured contracts for utility-scale solar and wind farms, often with associated storage, under public–private partnership frameworks.
These projects seek to reduce pressure on gas-fired plants and to support industrial activity in regions outside Tashkent. At the same time, Uzbekistan has moved from general interest in nuclear power to a more concrete cooperation track with Russia’s Rosatom, exploring plans for a high-capacity nuclear station and associated fuel-cycle services. The modalities of investment and the technological mix are now more varied than a decade ago, but oversight of the system by state entities remains essentially unchanged.
These domestic shifts coincide with an elite-level rethinking of Uzbekistan’s place in regional connectivity. The authorities view energy policy as linked with transport policy: they envision that the same corridors carrying commodities and containers should, in time, support trade in electricity, not excluding green hydrogen or other low-carbon exports. Tashkent has therefore sought to enter discussions about the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR, or “Middle Corridor”), which links supply chains from Central Asia to the South Caucasus and onward to Europe and has so far focused largely on Kazakhstan.
For the European Union, Central Asia has become a test region for its Global Gateway strategy, which seeks to diversify risk by promoting sustainable transport and energy links. Due to Uzbekistan’s evolving role as both an importer and a potential exporter of energy, its domestic reforms now carry implications not just for its own development trajectory but moreover for potential east–west flows, as its participation in cross-border infrastructure is being debated.
Conclusion: Uzbekistan’s Energy Choices and Euro-Atlantic Security
Seen in perspective, the evolution of Uzbekistan’s energy-sector policies is less a clean break than a controlled reconfiguration. The authorities are attempting to repurpose old Soviet-style structures to manage a more complex mix of partners and projects: state ownership and ministerial oversight remain central. At the same time, the range of investors, technologies, and contract forms is significantly broader than under Karimov.
It is unclear how well the system, which still retains many of its original features, will integrate large-scale solar and storage projects, planned nuclear capacity, and new transmission investments. An emerging “dual nuclear deal” would lock Rosatom into Uzbekistan’s power sector while opening space for non-Russian actors in renewables and grid modernization. The result will probably be a hybrid regime combining continuity in control with incremental diversification in instruments, rather than a full liberalization.
These internal changes have effects extending well beyond Uzbekistan into the international political economy of the energy sector in Eurasia at large. Increased gas imports from Russia, approaching 7.7 billion cubic metres per year, tie Tashkent more closely to broader Russian gas-export politics and supply decisions. Nuclear cooperation with Rosatom, if it proceeds as planned, will bind Uzbekistan into Russian technology and fuel-cycle services for decades, creating a long-term dependency in yet another sector of the power-generation system.
The expansion of renewables and storage capacity may, by contrast, improve prospects for Uzbekistan to act as a stabilizing node in Central Asian energy exchanges. It could, eventually, become an exporter of low-carbon electricity. These possible developments about gas imports, electricity trade, and future hydrogen (or critical-minerals) routes will be contingent upon broader corridor politics, hence on the priorities of other participants.
For Euro-Atlantic actors, including Canada, this evolving configuration is not an abstract matter. In effect, Uzbekistan has become an early test case of how internal energy-sector reform in Central Asia can alter the energy security environment for European and wider Euro-Atlantic partners. The European Union has already identified Central Asia as a priority region for Global Gateway investments; its policy documents explicitly connect sustainable transport, clean energy, and digital infrastructure along the Trans-Caspian route. At the first EU–Central Asia summit in Samarkand in April 2025, Brussels announced a multi-billion-euro package for the region, with notable allocations for transport, water, energy, and climate-related projects.
As European think tanks have underlined, Uzbekistan’s internal reforms and external alignments will influence whether those initiatives reduce existing patterns of concentrated dependency or merely reproduce them. For Canadian and NATO energy-security communities, the stakes lie in the resilience and predictability of the systems connecting European allies to Central Eurasia. Euro-Atlantic interests lie in supporting transparent project selection, grid modernization, regional interconnection, and rigorous safety and environmental standards in both renewables and nuclear power. These interests align with the most constructive directions in the continuing evolution of Uzbekistan’s energy sector.
Disclaimer: Any views or opinions expressed in articles are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the NATO Association of Canada.
