SEPT. 7 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — On a tour of Central Asia, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev in Astana. Alongside other deals, they finalised a deal for China to buy an 8.33% stake in Kashagan, a Caspian Sea oil project, for $5b. China beat India for the stake in Kazakhstan’s biggest energy project.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
SEPT. 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan plans to simplify the registration process for migrant workers by the end of 2013, media quoted Serik Sainov, head of the interior ministry’s migration department, as saying. Thousands of foreigners work illegally in Kazakhstan. Simplifying registration rules should benefit both businesses and individuals.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
SEPT. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Xi Jinping, China’s president, toured Central Asia’s capitals meeting leaders and sealing business deals. In Turkmenistan Mr Xi inaugurated the start of production at Galkynysh, the world’s second biggest gas field, and in Kazakhstan he confirmed a $5b deal to buy an 8.33% share in the Kashagan oil field.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
SEPT. 6 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — A drop in savings held in Kazakh tenge in July showed people were losing confidence in Kazakhstan’s currency, the respected kapital.kz said. Central Bank data showed 350b tenge was withdrawn from bank accounts in July, reducing the proportion of savings held in tenge to about 61%, down from 66%.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
SEPT. 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Corruption and a poorly educated workforce are the biggest problems to doing business in Kazakhstan, according to executives interviewed in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitive Index. The index ranked Kazakhstan at 50th position, up one place from last year, out of 148 countries.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
SEPT. 5 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan’s Central Bank will invest 20% of a $120m state-managed pension fund in foreign stock markets over the next five years, Grigory Marchenko, head of the Central Bank, told Reuters in an interview. Kazakhstan aims to create the pension fund through the enforced merger of 10 private funds by the end of 2013.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
SEPT. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) –Just as first oil from the giant Kashagan field in Kazakhstan’s sector of the Caspian Sea draws tantalisingly close, a partner in one of its main export routes has warned of a delay to planned capacity expansion.
In an interview with Reuters, Mikhail Barkov, vice-president at Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft, said work to expand the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) pipeline that runs from Atyrau in west Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiik had been delayed by 6-12 months.
He didn’t give any reason for the delay.
Transneft is the largest shareholder in CPC, followed by Kazmunaigas and US oil major Chevron. There are several other smaller shareholders. The pipeline started operations in 2001 and has been an important export route for Kazakh oil, mainly from the Chevron-led Tengizchevroil project.
The plan had been to roughly double the capacity of CPC to about 1.3m barrels of oil a day by 2015, partly to cope with extra supplies from the Kashagan oil field.
News of the CPC delay is likely to frustrate Kazakh oil exporters, particularly as they were set to soon celebrate the first oil from Kashagan after years of delays and cost overruns.
On Sept. 7, Sauat Mynbayev, head of Kazmunaigas, said that Kashagan would start production within a month.
An expanded CPC has been touted as one of the primary export routes for oil from Kashagan. The expansion delay is likely to push oil from Kashagan — operated by a consortium of ENI, ExxonMobil, Total, Kazmunaigas, Shell, Inpex and now China’s CNPC — onto other export routes wholly owned by Russia.
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
SEPT. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — On a visit to a school in Astana, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev had some advice for the country’s youth.
He credited his success to an hour of exercise each morning and to his high-brow, if somewhat eclectic, reading material.
“I get up at 6.30am and do physical exercise for exactly one hour,” he said according to the Tengrinews website. “When you get used to living with it, you can’t do without it.”
And on his reading habits, Kazakhstan’s only post-Soviet leader and the self-styled Father of the Nation said that he took his inspiration from a select group of high-brow authors; Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekov, the Roman philosopher Seneca and the French 19th century novelist Honore de Balzac.
“You should read and not sit in social networks,” Mr Nazarbayev said on his visit to the school. “Social media is a fashion and will pass.”
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(News report from Issue No. 151, published on Sept. 11 2013)
AUG. 28 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) –Kazakh football team Shakhter Karagandy narrowly missed out on becoming the first side from Kazakhstan to compete in the UEFA Champions League group stages after losing 3-0 in Glasgow, Scotland, to Celtic. Shakhter Karagandy had beaten Celtic 2-0 in the first leg of the tie a week earlier in Astana.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
AUG. 31 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Hundreds of youths in Almaty smashed cars and hurled bottles at police after a pop concert at a shopping mall was abruptly cancelled. Media reported that security forces called in specially armed riot police to control the crowds. Over 165 arrests were made and about a dozen people were injured.
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(News report from Issue No. 150, published on Sept. 2 2013)
