President Trump and the president of Uzbekistan vowed to make energy cooperation a top priority Wednesday, with Exxon Mobil and General Electric signing cooperative agreements on natural gas and oil as the leaders signed a new joint partnership agreement.
The agreement opens a “new era” of cooperation between the two countries by creating “favorable conditions” for U.S. businesses, according to the agreement.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev “pledged” to open his country’s market to U.S. companies and investors through the introduction of international standards of transparency, accountability, and rule of law.
Energy cooperation fits into the category of economic cooperation.
“The leaders vowed to explore greater economic cooperation, including in the fields of agriculture, energy, finance, chemicals, tourism, textiles, health, and digital innovation,” the agreement reads.
The signing of the document came after Uzbekistan signed more than 20 major business deals with U.S. companies worth over $4.8 billion, while sustaining more than 10,000 U.S. jobs and opening billions of dollars in future contracts for U.S. companies.
Most of the agreements involved energy development or management.
GE scored three energy deals to help build a state-of-the-art natural gas power plant, develop a natural gas transportation network, and audit one of the country’s natural gas compressor station and turbine networks
Uzbekneftegaz and Exxon Mobil also signed a memorandum of intent on cooperation to start production of base oils at the Fergana refinery.
The company SkyPower signed a deal to build the country’s first utility-scale solar array.
Mirziyoyev is slated to meet with World Bank officials on development issues during his visit to Washington.
“Uzbekistan is one of the world’s major producers and exporters of natural gas – but it is also one of the world’s most energy-intensive economies,” according to the World Bank. “The country uses twice as much energy as its neighbor Kazakhstan to produce a unit of GDP, and six times as much as Germany.”
The Uzbek government is attempting to change that by creating a national strategy to cut energy use in half by 2030, which the World Bank is helping the country fund.
The country is the world’s 13th largest producer of natural gas and 11th largest producer of gold, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Trump has the distinction of leading a country that is the largest natural gas producer in the world, surpassing Russia in 2009, according to the Energy Department. The U.S. became a net exporter of the fuel last year.
