AUG. 2 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Romserv, part of the Rompetrol group, has won a $1b contract to modernise the refinery at Pavlodar in northern Kazakhstan, media reported. Kazakh state energy company Kazmunaigas bought a 75% stake in Rompetrol from Romania in 2007. The Pavlodar refinery was built in 1978 and is one of three in Kazakshtan.
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(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)
JULY 20 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon has officially opened the first oil refinery in Tajikistan. The refinery has the capacity to process around 100,000 tonnes of oil a year. Russia, which had supplied Tajikistan with most of its oil products, will supply oil to the new refinery.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 22 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan has been on something of a spending spree. Whether through SOFAZ, the state’s oil fund, or through SOCAR, the state energy company, Azerbaijan’s government has spent millions of dollars on overseas investments.
These included properties in some of the world’s most expensive cities — SOFAZ bought an office block in London’s St James’ for $286m in 2012, then spent $180m on property in Paris and $133m on a building in Moscow — as well as large currency deals and gold purchases.
Property prices in London and Paris are soaring and gold is seen as a sensible long-term bet so these appear solid investments. Azerbaijan’s latest investment, though, strikes an off-beat cord.
Azerbaijani and Russian news website reported comments made in Moscow by the visiting PM of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, on July 12. He said SOCAR had agreed to spend 500m euro building a new luxury resort on Montenegro’s attractive Adriatic coast.
Various websites have since reported that two private companies, Triangle Investments and Developments Limited and Azmont Investments LLC, will pursue the project on behalf of SOCAR.
For most countries, spending 500m euro on building a luxury resort in Montenegro is a risky investment choice.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 19 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan produced 21.8m tonnes of oil in the first half of 2013, a 1.8% drop compared to the same period in 2012, media reported quoting official statistics.
Despite the drop, this is actually a reasonable success. The fall between Jan.-June 2012 and Jan.-June 2011 was 7.2%. This output drop had become a major problem not only to Azerbaijan’s economy, which is reliant on energy sales, but also to the country’s prestige. So much so, in fact, that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev stepped in.
Last year Mr Aliyev publicly criticised British energy company BP for not producing enough oil from the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) field in the Caspian Sea. This is Azerbaijan’s largest oil producing project and central to its future earnings.
BP now seems to have made good on their pledge to halt ACG’s output decline. Its production in the first half of the year stabilised and averaged 666,000 barrels per day, media quoted BP’s regional manager Gordon Birrell as saying. This is around 70% of Azerbaijan’s daily total.
The oil boom years for Azerbaijan are, if not waning, slightly diminishing. After Russia and Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan is the largest oil producer in the former Soviet Union but total production has slipped nearly 16% from 51m tonnes in 2010 to 43m tonnes last year. There is still plenty of oil for Azerbaijan to produce but gas is seen as the next big thing.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 18 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kashagan, the giant oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea, will produce its first oil by end of 2013, said the consortium developing the field, the North Caspian Operating Company. Kazakhstan has staked its future on the successful completion of Kashagan and has become frustrated over delays.
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(News report from Issue No. 144, published on July 22 2013)
JULY 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — More than 200 workers at a subcontractor for oil fields service company Cape International Plc and Manpower Ltd in Atyrau, west Kazakhstan, went on strike for two days over job losses, media quoted the local prosecutor-general’s office as saying. The workers are employed on the Kashagan oil project in the Caspian Sea.
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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)
JULY 9 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Norwegian energy company Statoil wants to re-start exploration at the Zafar-Mashal oil and gas bloc in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea, media reported. The Zafar-Mashal bloc has been mothballed since the mid-2000s when ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips withdrew from the field because it was commercially unviable.
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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)
JULY 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s government voted to scrap import duty and VAT on a series of oil-based products used in the construction and road-building sectors, media reported. These products include petroleum bitumen which is used as asphalt to build roads. Duties on these products are due to be scrapped on Jan. 1 2014.
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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)
JULY 8 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan state energy company SOCAR and Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft are negotiating on re-starting oil shipments along the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, media reported.
This is probably more significant for Azerbaijan-Russia relations than to energy supplies.
With construction finished in 1997, the Baku- Novorossiysk pipeline was one of the early post-Soviet Union pipelines. It runs 1,330km from Baku to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. From there the oil is shipped on to Europe. Volumes along the route, though, have been declining as Azerbaijan has worked to open up alternative routes to Europe, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
Last year, the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline pumped only about 8% of Azerbaijan’s oil to its export markets.
In May 2013, throughput along the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline stopped altogether. Both sides were losing money on the deal. There wasn’t enough volume for the Russians and the price for its oil was too low for the Azerbaijanis.
It may be economically more efficient for the pipeline to stay idle but politically it needs to re-open.
Russia has approved a major arms deal with Azerbaijan, executives from Rosneft, the Russian state energy company, have visited Baku and senior Russian politicians have talked about a strategic deal between the two countries.
Re-starting an oil pipeline between the two countries may fit the pattern of increasingly close cooperation.
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(News report from Issue No. 143, published on July 15 2013)
JULY 3 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev sacked his energy minister, reportedly because of continued delays to the Kashagan oil project, Kazakhstan’s flagship energy development. Sauat Mynbayev had been energy minister since 2007. He moves to head Kazmunaigas, the Kazakh state energy company. Uzakbai Karabalin, a technocrat, becomes the new energy minister.
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(News report from Issue No. 142, published on July 8 2013)
