MAY 20 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In yet another sign of improving Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan relations, the countries’ state-run energy companies pledged to jointly develop Caspian Sea oil and gas fields. It’s unclear if this deal has a practical bent to it or if it is designed simply to be an eye- catching bilateral deal.
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(News report from Issue No. 330, published on May 28 2017)
MAY 6 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a boost for its ambitions to become the region’s top gas exporter, Turkmenistan said that it had discovered a potentially large gas field near the Caspian Sea.
New gas field finds, especially of the size touted by Turkmenistan, are rare and the announcement created excitement in the oil and gas sector.
“According to the preliminary estimates, the well’s productivity is 500,000 cubic meters of natural gas and 150 tonnes of gas condensate per day, which confirms the huge hydrocarbon potential of the coastal zone and the shallow waters of the Caspian Sea,” the state-owned news agency Turkmenistan Today said of the discovery at the Uzunada area.
“Increasing hydrocarbon production is one of the priorities of the domestic fuel and energy complex.”
Turkmenistan’s economy is heavily skewed towards gas exports, mainly from the Galkynysh field, the second largest in the world, in the east of the country. A pipeline from the field feeds gas directly to China and a new pipeline is being built that will pump gas to Pakistan and India.
Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has talked of diversifying the Turkmen economy towards fertilizer and electricity production, but gas still dominates. The fall in gas prices has hit it hard and even forced a rare admission of economic weakness, with a cut to the manat currency in 2015.
If the new field was commercially exploited and did manage to produce at the rate of 500,000 cubic metres of gas per day claimed by Turkmenistan, it would add significant capacity to the country’s overall production. The Galkynysh field produces gas at around 1.7m – 2m cubic metres per day.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP’s Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field bloc in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea produced 581,000 barrels of oil per day in the first three months of the year, it said in a statement. This is a significant drop compared to the year before when output was recorded at 651,000 barrels per day. BP has been under pressure from the Azerbaijani authorities to boost production at SCG, the country’s main oil producers and the latest figures will likely irritate Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has started shipping oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline for the first time since mid-2015, media reported quoting the Azerbaijani energy ministry, an indication that the country’s oil production has picked up. BTC is considered an important part of the region’s energy infrastructure as it pushes oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey. Kazakhstan had cut its oil production as prices fell. The Azerbaijani energy ministry said that 90,000 tonnes of oil from Kazakhstan have been pumped through BTC already this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 8 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Iranian officials said they were ready to sue Turkmenistan in an international arbitration court for cutting gas supplies this winter, ramping up tension between the neighbours.
The announcement highlights just how far relations between Iran and Turkmenistan have splintered since Turkmen officials said last year that Iran hadn’t paid a $1.8b bill for gas delivered in 2007 and 2008.
In a statement quoted by Iranian media, Hamid Reza Araqi, managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), said Turkmenistan had failed its commitments.
“The price of gas, the damage they inflicted on Iran in winter by cutting off gas supplies, and the quality of gas delivered to Iran are three cases claimed by Iran,” he was quoted as saying. “Iran’s documents are ready to be submitted to the International Court of Arbitration.”
To some extent the row shows the strain an economic downturn has put countries and their leaders under. Before Turkmen officials accused Iran of reneging on bills, relations had been improving every month. As well as gas supplies Turkmen electricity was being imported, political links had been strengthened and there was talk of Iran providing Turkmenistan with access to the Persian Gulf through a swap system.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
APRIL 28 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk Kazyna and its state-run energy company Kazmunaigas will receive $180m from the Kashagan oil project in 2017, media reported, quoting Dauren Karabayev, a vice president at Kazmunaigas. The Kazakh economy has been flatlining since mid-2014 when oil prices collapsed. Kashagan, in the Caspian Sea, finally came onstream at the end of last year after a delay of three years.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
APRIL 27 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uzbekistan started construction of a $2.2b oil refinery near the border with Kazakhstan, a project that will boost jobs and should also plug a yawning fuel supply gap.
The Jizzakh refinery will be Uzbekistan’s fourth and will produce more than 3.7m tonnes of gasoline, more than 700,000 tonnes of jet fuel and about 300,000 tonnes of other oil products annually, according to officials.
It will receive unrefined oil through a yet-to-be-built pipeline from Kazakhstan, helping to cement improving bilateral relations.
The refinery is the most high- profile project initiated under President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, Uzbek leader since September last year. He has made boosting jobs and improving bilateral relations with Uzbekistan’s neighbours his core policy initiatives.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
MAY 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Employees at Uzbekistan’s state- owned UzGasOil network of petrol stations have not been paid their salaries, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported. It said that in a rare show of worker defiance in Uzbekistan, the UzGasOil employees had complained directly to the management about their unpaid salaries. RFE/RL quoted one worker saying that he was owed about $125 for two months work. RFE/RL contacted UzGasOil, rebranded from Uzbekneftegaz this year, who denied that there was a problem. In Uzbekistan, protests by workers against company management are virtually unheard of.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
MAY 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Pakistan’s ministry of natural resources said that it expected the TAPI gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan to northern India to be completed on schedule in 2020. The pipeline is considered vital for Turkmenistan’s economy and also for consumers in Pakistan and India who are hungry for more power.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
MAY 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In an interview with Reuters, BP’s Georgia country manager, Chris Schlueter said that the middle section of the $40b Southern Gas Corridor would be completed on time in 2018. This is important because it indicates that the entire pipeline system, running from Azerbaijan’s Caspian Sea coast across Georgia and Turkey into the Balkans and across the Aegean Sea to Italy may be operational by 2020 as promised. The Southern Gas Corridor is supposed to reduce Europe’s reliance on gas supplies from Russia and also boost Azerbaijan’s economy.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
