Tag Archives: oil

Kazakhstan restarts oil exports via BTC

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)

UzGazOil workers complain about salaries

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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)

Azerbaijan-focused Abershon to produce by 2019

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APRIL 25 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Abershon field in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea, operated by France’s Total, could start gas production in late 2019 or early 2020, an official at Azerbaijan’s state energy company Socar said. Aberson is considered to be a potentially major gas producer for Azerbaijan which is heavily reliant on the energy sector for revenue. The field was discovered in 2011.

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(News report from Issue No. 326, published on April 28 2017)

Azerbaijani state oil fund rises

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APRIL 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil fund Sofaz is worth £33.2b, officials said, a slight increase from $33.147 at the beginning of the year. This figure is important because Azerbaijan has been borrowing cash from Sofaz to top up its state budget which has shrunk with falling oil prices.

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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)

Kazakh state energy producer to boost investments

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APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a clear sign of renewed confidence that oil prices will stay at around $50-55/barrel, KMG EP, the London-listed division of the Kazakh state energy producer Kazmunaigas said that it was going to raise its capital expenditure by 12% to 133b tenge ($369m). The company said that the extra investment would be used to improve the efficiency of existing projects.

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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)

EnerMech secures BP deal in Azerbaijan

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APRIL 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Aberdeen-based oil and gas services company EnerMech said that it had won contracts worth £40m ($50m) in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea to manage BP’s crane operations. John Guy, EnerMech’s regional director for the Middle East, Asia and Caspian, said that the company employs 300 people in the region and sees Azerbaijan as an important, and growing, part of its business.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Azerbaijan BTC throughput falls

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APRIL 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company Socar said that the amount of oil pumped through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) had fallen by more than 11% in the first three months of the year, media reported. The fall is linked to a drop in oil being produced by fields in the region, a drop triggered by the collapse in oil prices from $110/barrel in mid-2014 to under $30/barrel in Jan. 2016 and around $50/barrel now. Azearbaijan has exported less oil via BTC and Kazakh producers have turned to the cheaper CPC pipeline that runs around the Caspian Sea to Novorossiya on Russia’s Black Sea coast.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)f

Kazakhstan-focused oil producer posts 47% revenue fall

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APRIL 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tethys, the embattled London- listed oil producer with interests in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Georgia, said that its revenues from oil and gas sales had fallen by 47% in 2016 to $11.7m. It said that the drop was due to a fall in production and a devaluation of the tenge in the second half of 2015. Tethys sells most of its oil in Kazakhstan’s domestic market.

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Refined oil exports drop in Azerbaijan

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APRIL 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s exports of refined oil products fell by 18.3% in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the year before to 286,000 tonnes, media reported quoting state- owned SOCAR. SOCAR didn’t give a reason for the drop but oil sales and refined oil products are a vital part of Azerbaijan’s economy and foreign earning power. Azerbaijan, like the rest of the region, is trying to recover from an economic slump.

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

BP wants contract extension on Azerbaijan’s ACG oil fields

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APRIL 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Bob Dudley, the BP CEO, said that he had signed a letter of intent with the other partners of Azerbaijan’s ACG to extend the contract to operate the country’s biggest oil producing site by 25 years to 2050.

He said a final contract still needed to be signed but that this was likely this year. ACG is critical to Azerbaijan’s economy although its production rate has been falling over the past few years, a drop blamed on aging infrastructure, frustrating Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev.

“I think it’ll happen this year,” media quoted Mr Dudley as saying of the ACG contract extension.

“The contract expires in 2024, but you don’t want activity to drop off in the end of the contract period.”

BP owns a 35.78% stake in ACG (Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli). The other shareholders are Chevron (11.28%), Inpex (10.96%), AzACG (11.65 per- cent), Statoil (8.55 percent), Exxon (8 percent), TPAO (6.75 percent), Itochu (4.3 percent) and ONGC (2.72 percent).

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)