The Meeting of the Government of Georgia was held on 25 January 2006. The Government discussed 35 items of the agenda.
Before the commencement of the Meeting, Prime Minister of Georgia Zurab Noghaideli said: as a result of three explosions, 40% of energy sources came out of order. Nevertheless, as a result of the works performed by power engineers and the efforts of the Government, we were able to maintain the energy sector to a certain level. If such a thing had occurred even a year ago, it would have caused a disaster in our power grid. The works that performed for the last two years have proved to be very useful. Now our core objective is to restore full power and gas supply. The population have been provided with all the power supply available, with limitations to industrial facilities only. Our objective is to improve the power and gas supply to the population right today. Gas supply from Russia is going to be restored during the day.
Minister of Energy of Georgia Nika Gilauri:
From Azerbaijan, Georgia imports approximately 2.5 mln m3 gas. This is enough to provide gas supply to only 40-45% of the city and Power Unit 9. Under these conditions, the power supply consumption has increased, as part of the population that gets no gas supply gets heating by means of electric heaters. Therefore, instead of 500 megawatt, Tbilisi is now consuming 640-650 megawatt electricity. Yesterday, we had a 1600 megawatt peak that was covered by Georgian Generation and with the import from Turkey, Azerbaijan, etc. The problem under such circumstances was lack of reserve, as any small accident could have caused certain limitations. Today, we have passed a morning peak without a problem, with only a minor accident in Zestafoni substation that shut off Zestafoni and Bagdati for 40-45 minutes.
Despite the fact that Russia's reduction of gas supply to Azerbaijan has caused certain problems in gas supply to Azerbaijan, too, at this point we are working with Azerbaijan to import additional gas from there.
GazProm spread the information that the damaged gas pipeline is being repaired but we have not received any official statement.
Press Center of the Chancellery of the Government of Georgia