Gas Company Staff Among Those Implicated as Uzbekistan Seizes 9,139 LPG Cylinders in October Sweep

Uzbekistan’s Interior Ministry uncovered 374 cases of illegal storage and sale of liquefied petroleum gas and 16 separate violations involving coal during October inspections, with enforcement operations pulling 9,139 gas cylinders, 92.9 tonnes of LPG and 333.54 tonnes of coal out of unauthorised circulation.

The ministry’s press service said the seized coal was redirected to residential consumers. Measures were taken to return the confiscated cylinders and gas to legitimate end-users. Notably, employees of gas supply enterprises were found to have been involved in a number of the thefts — a finding that points to insider abuse rather than purely external black-market activity.

A System Under Strain

Interior Minister Aziz Tashpulatov convened a meeting focused on securing uninterrupted fuel supplies to households and social facilities — covering coal, natural gas and LPG — and on preventing corruption and theft in distribution chains. The gathering set concrete operational targets: cylinder deliveries must run to schedule, accounting during transport and distribution must become transparent, and unjustified charges to consumers must be eliminated.

The ministry said it would intensify preventive operations to detect discrepancies between actual delivery volumes and reported figures, cases of under-supply, and abuse of official authority. Working jointly with the state gas distributor Khududgaztaminot and the Ministry of Transport, the Interior Ministry will tighten oversight of logistics routes, route compliance and road safety. Additional security measures are planned at gas-filling stations, warehouses and distribution depots.

Chronic Delivery Failures and the Reform Response

The enforcement drive follows a presidential-level discussion in early September, when President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was briefed on LPG supply problems. At that meeting it emerged that roughly 3.8 million consumers and nearly 2,000 social facilities depend on LPG, with 604,800 tonnes allocated for delivery in 2026. Inspections subsequently found that 22 percent of consumers receive replacement cylinders at intervals exceeding 46 days — a gap long enough to force some households to buy fuel at market prices from vehicle filling stations.

Two structural fixes are in train. A pilot scheme involving private operators has been announced to improve the delivery system. Separately, a subsidiary company called LPG-Trade is being established within Khududgaztaminot; it will procure liquefied gas through the commodity exchange and organise supply directly to consumers, introducing a market-based procurement layer intended to reduce the opacity that has enabled diversion and overcharging.