Iran has indicated it is prepared to export natural gas to this former Soviet country, which has been severely hit by a sharp drop in Russian gas deliveries, Georgia's energy minister said on Tuesday.
Millions of Georgians remained without gas on Tuesday for the third day in freezing winter temperatures because of gas shortages that followed pipeline blasts in a southern Russian region neighboring Georgia.
The incident has prompted Georgia's pro-Western government to urgently seek to diversify its energy imports.
"Iran has said it is willing to supply gas to Georgia," Energy Minister Nika Gilauri told reporters after a quick trip to Iran.
Half of the 1.5 million residents in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, are without gas, while in the rest of the 4.7-million nation, only two mountainous regions are getting gas supplies, Energy Ministry spokeswoman Teona Doliashvili said.
Russia has piped alternative gas supplies to Georgia from Azerbaijan, but Gilauri said on Tuesday the country was getting only around 35 percent of its usual gas volumes from Russia.
Georgia, which also has suffered electricity cuts, is in the midst of an exceptionally cold snap with daytime temperatures that have fallen to minus 25oC in remote mountain regions.
Some Tbilisi residents carted wood into their apartments to light stoves while those with a reliable power supply plugged electric radiators in.
In the eastern city of Rustavi, the 120,000 inhabitants were without electricity, gas or water, Georgian television reported.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS