SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Almaty and the oil-rich region of Mangistau in the west of the country are the only regions in Kazakhstan receiving a significant inflow of people looking for work, data published on the ranking.kz website reported. The data also showed that most of the people moving to these areas settled in villages rather than cities.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
ALMATY, SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), has finished upgrade work to two pumping stations that will boost the capacity of its oil pipeline running from west Kazakhstan to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
Plans to increase the capacity of the Tengiz field near Atyrau have been delayed because of low oil prices, but the gradual expansion of the CPC’s capacity is still important.
Specifically, the latest upgrade work was focused on the pipeline’s two pumping stations in Kazakhstan. The upgrade will boost the flow of oil through the pipeline to 38m tonnes of oil from 35m.
This is a stepping stone towards hitting higher capacity. Nikolai Savin, a deputy vice-president at Russian pipeline company Transneft, explained the consortium’s ambitions.
“The expansion will allow us to increase the volume of transported oil to 67-70m tonnes a year,” local media quoted him as saying. “In the future, the Kazakh fields at Tengiz, Karachaganak and Kashagan will ship around 55m tonnes through CPC.”
CPC, which was established in 2001, is an international pipeline jointly operated by the Russian and Kazakh governments together with national and multinational oil companies led by US’ Chevron. Chevron is also the lead Western partner developing the Tengiz field in the Tengizchevroil consortium (TCO).
The Tengiz field is Kazakhstan’s main oil producer, pumping roughly 27m tonnes of oil each year. This is a third of Kazakhstan’s total oil production. Almost all of the oil produced by Tengiz is exported via CPC.
For years, TCO has been planning to expand production. The project was suspended, though, earlier this year because of the sustained low oil prices, frustrating both investors and the Kazakh government.
According to Sauat Mynbayev, Chairman of Kazmunaigas, Kazakhstan’s state-owned company which holds shares in both CPC and TCO, a final investment decision for Tengiz will be made in Jan. 2016 (Sept. 17). In any case, he said costs had been cut.
“When it was planned, the TCO expansion was quoted at $38b,” Mr Mynbayev told the Interfax news agency. “In the current circumstances, we decided to re-negotiate with all contractors to bring the cost down to around $34b.”
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 14 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Almaty and the oil-rich region of Mangistau in the west of the country are the only regions in Kazakhstan receiving a significant inflow of people looking for work, data published on the ranking.kz website reported. The data also showed that most of the people moving to these areas settled in villages rather than cities.
ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 248, published on Sept. 18 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Abat Nurseitov resigned as general director of KMG EP, the London-listed unit of Kazakhstan’s state oil and gas company. Mr Nurseitov had been general director since January 2013. Dastan Abdulgafarov, the CFO, was appointed interim CEO.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 8 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Irish industrial services company Deborah Services Limited (DSL) and Lancaster Group, a Kazakh private holding company, signed a multi-million euro agreement to form a joint venture to serve oil and gas operations in Kazakhstan. Infrastructure and utility support firm Siteserv owns DSL. The new company, DSL Caspian, will provide protective coatings and fire protection at onshore and offshore oilfields in Kazakhstan. Lancaster Group is closely linked to the Kazakh elite. Yerbolat Dossayev, currently minister of economic development, is a major stakeholder in the group.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Iran’s Khazar Exploration and Pro- duction Co. (KEPCO), a subsidiary of National Iranian Oil Company, met with officials from the Azerbaijani state oil and gas company SOCAR in Tehran to discuss how best to work together to explore and exploit oil fields in the Caspian Sea. Iran has has begun to re-integrate into the global community.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — The biggest movers on the stock markets were copper producer KAZ Minerals which finished the week up 8%, Roxi Petroleum settled down 12% and Centerra Gold fell by 6.6%.
KAZ Minerals’ share price has fluctuated wildly, hit by China’s economic health and commodity prices. It is now trading at 162 pence, up from around 150 pence at the start of the week. It is sensitive to the value of the tenge which weakened by 10% this week and gave KAZ Minerals a lift.
Roxi Petroleum’s main oil assets are in Kazakhstan.
Its shares fell after it said it was having to downgrade the value of its assets by 28% in line with the fall in the tenge last month.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 9 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – If oil prices continue to fall, Kazakhstan may cut production back to 73m tonnes a year, media quoted deputy energy minister Uzakbai Karabalin as saying. Kazakhstan is projected to produce around 80m tonnes of oil this year. Oil is the main driver of the Kazakh economy.
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Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved
(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — London-listed Roxi Petroleum said it had downgraded the value of its assets in Kazakhstan by 28% after last month’s devaluation of the tenge. Roxi’s main activities are focused in the Mangistau region, west Kazakhstan. Since the announcement, Roxi’s share price has fallen by 12%.
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(News report from Issue No. 247, published on Sept. 11 2015)
SEPT. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Shares in Toronto- and London listed Tethys Petroleum, whose focus is on oil and gas production and exploration in Central Asia, fell significantly after rival Nostrum on Aug. 28 cut a third off the value of an earlier buyout offer.
Tethys shares in Toronto fell by 20% and in London by 29.3%. Tethys responded by saying that it would honour the exclusivity agreement with Nostrum and then look to other companies for potential buyers.
Nostrum said that it had cut its offer after a new due diligence project showed that the original offer had overvalued the company.
In mining, shares in London-listed KAZ Minerals lost 14.2% of their value between Aug. 28 and Sept. 4, wiping gains from August’s devaluation.
KAZ Minerals used to be called Kazakhmys and is focused on copper production.
The Global Depositary Receipts (GDRs) of TBC Bank, which are traded in London, fell by around 8% over the week to $9.12, the lowest price to date for the bank.
TBC, which is the largest retail bank in Georgia and counts PM Irakli Garibashvili as a director, has been trading its GDRs in London since 2014.
The Georgian economy, like the rest of the region, has been dealing with the fallout from the slowdown in Russia’s economy. Georgia is also vulnerable to Greece, its second largest source of remittances. There was no particular news from TBC that would have pressures its GDRs.
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(News report from Issue No. 280, published on May 13 2016)
