Tag Archives: gas

BP appoints new region chief in Azerbaijan

MARCH 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP, the dominant oil major in Azerbaijan, appointed Gary Jones, previously head of drilling as its new regional chief in Baku. Mr Jones’ predecessor, Gordon Birrell, has moved to London as COO for production. BP has been under pressure from Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev to boost the performance of the country’s main oil producing site, Azeri-Chirag- Gunashli (ACG), where output has dropped.

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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)

China eyes up investment in Uzbek gas field

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MARCH 16 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — China is eyeing up a major investment in a gas field in southern Uzbekistan, media reported. The gas field is operated by the Uzbek-Chinese JV New Silk Road Oil & Gas Company, which is likely to contract China’s state-run CNPC to develop the site, funded by loans from China. China has been pushing hard to expand its project portfolio inside Central Asia.

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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)

Turkmen president travels to Qatar looking for investors

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MARCH 15 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov travelled to Qatar to try to charm its leaders into investing in Turkmenistan. The Turkmen economy is under pressure from sustained low oil and gas prices. In particular Qatar’s state news agency said that Mr Berdymukhamedov was looking for investment in the so-called TAPI gas pipeline that will run from gas fields in Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan and India, and also for investment in gas processing plants.

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(News report from Issue No. 321, published on March 20 2017)

Azerbaijan’s SOFAZ to invest in real estate

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MARCH 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil fund, SOFAZ, has investments worth $1.7b in foreign real estate deals, its press office told the Russian news agency Interfax. SOFAZ started investing in foreign property in 2012.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Rio-Tinto is planning investments in Kazakhstan, says official

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MARCH 9 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — After a meeting with two senior officials from Rio Tinto at a trade fair in Toronto, Kazakhstan’s deputy minister for investment development, Timur Toktabayev, said that the mining company planned a couple of significant investments in the country. The British-Australian company is one of the biggest miners in the world but doesn’t currently have any projects in Kazakhstan. If it did start work on a project in Kazakhstan, it would give the country a major PR boost.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Stock market: Brent

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MARCH 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Governments across the Central Asia/South Caucasus region will be nervously watching the Brent spot price as it slips back down to that all-important $50/barrel level. This is the psychological breakpoint.

If Brent oil dips below $50/barrel, national budgets, which have just been adjusted upwards, will have to be rethought. It broke through this level in mid-December and had hovered around the $55/barrel mark since then, before taking a downturn.

Oil prices had been pushed up in mid-December by a plan lead by producers to cut output. Data, though, this week showed that crude oil stocks held by the US government have risen, raising concerns that the fragile coalition patched together to contain global production was cracking. Data from Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Nigeria also suggested that production was rising again.

Kazakhstan’s output estimate has also been increased. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) said Kazakhstan would produce 1.88m barrels of oil/day in 2017, compared to an earlier estimate of 1.86m barrels/day. In 2016, it produced 1.73m barrels of oil/day.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Kazakh energy site pays fine

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MARCH 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The consortium developing the Karachaganak oil and gas site in northwest Kazakhstan paid a fine of 10.4m tenge ($32,800) because of an inventory error, media reported quoting the court in west Kazakhstan. It wasn’t specific about the inventory error. In a far bigger arbitration dispute playing out from last year, the Kazakh government has accused the Karachaganak consortium of withholding oil worth billions.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Azerbaijan’s SOCAR buys oil tankers

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MARCH 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Socar, Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company, bought seven large oil tankers from Turkey-based Palmali last month to boost trade capacity in the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean. In an interview with Reuters, Arzu Azimov, head of the Geneva-based Socar Trading, said the company wanted to boost its shipping capacity. Socar Trading now owns 37 tankers, although most of these are significantly smaller than the large tankers it has just bought.

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(News report from Issue No. 320, published on March 13 2017)

Azerbaijan-Russia-Iran to hold talks on energy corridor

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FEB. 21 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia, Azerbaijan and Iran plan to meet up next month to discuss setting up a North-South energy corridor, Russian energy minister Alexander Novak was quoted by media as saying. This is important as regional governments have been talking about trying to build a North-South energy corridor for years. It would give gas and oil produced in Russia, Central Asia and the South Caucasus access to the Persian Gulf, and Iran much- needed energy supplies in the north of the country.

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(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)

Azerbaijani section of Southern corridor to work by 2020

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FEB. 19 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The so-called Southern Gas Corridor running from the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea to Europe will be operational by 2020, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said at an international security conference in Munich. He said that the South Caucasus Pipeline was 80% complete, the TAP pipeline line was 35% complete and the extension on the Shah Deniz gas field was 90% complete.

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(News report from Issue No. 318, published on Feb.24 2017)