Agreement on Redistribution of Enguri Resources at 60/40 Parity must be Strictly Adhered to - Zurab Noghaideli

"Abkhazia's consumption will naturally be less than 40% of the manufacture of Enguri and Vardnili HPPs in the period of May-August 2021. During the same period, the consumption of the rest of Georgia should be balanced at the expense of increased production of Enguri and Vardnili HPPs, and we should not operate thermal power plants or imports, except for the technical imports necessary for the parallel regime.", notes Zurab Noghaideli, member of the Supervisory Board of the company El Green.

According to him, only one of the combined cycle thermal power plants should be operated from September 2021, and minimal imports should be carried out, which would balance the consumption of the rest of Georgia with increased generation of Enguri HPP until 60% of the electricity is not generated by Enguri and Vardnili hydroelectric stations. 

Zurab Noghaideli also defines, that as soon as Enguri's plant is renovated, it is necessary to strictly adhere to the existing agreement with the de facto Abkhazian side, which provides for the redistribution of Enguri resource by parity over 60/40.

"According to this agreement, 60% should remain at the disposal of the Georgian side, and 40% - in the de facto Abkhazian administration. Georgia must ensure that the agreement between the parties is strictly adhered to.

I think that it is not difficult to achieve this goal and the fact, that Georgian side did not subsidize the consumption of Abkhazians after suspending renovating processes on Enguri HPP, will play a vital role in this strategy. Today, it is balanced by Russian imports with Salkhino and Caucasus lines." 

According to the agreement, 40% of Enguri and Vardnili HPPs, which is 1,64 billion kilowatt-hours, belong to Abkhazia. Therefore, the deficit of their total consumption (3.04 billion kilowatt-hours), about 1.4 billion kilowatt-hours must be filled from other sources.

The base price of this volume of electricity, in the case of imports from Russia, amounts to $75 million. Zurab Noghaideli emphasizes that it is necessary to make it very clear to the de facto Abkhazia's administration today that neither the Georgian budget, nor ESCO, nor the Georgian population will subsidize this amount.

Consumption of de facto Abkhazia has increased over the last 3 years. This fact is explained by the power supply of cryptocurrency mining farms.