JAN. 21 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — British oil company BP will invest $150m in the renovation of the Baku-Supsa oil pipeline, the Georgian government said. BP did not give further details on the pipeline upgrade. The pipeline runs from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. Last year, rebels from the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia grabbed a portion of the pipeline.
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(News report from Issue No. 264, published on Jan. 22 2016)
JAN. 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), a pipeline designed to transport oil from the Tengiz oil field in western Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea coast, said it had increased its output by 7% in 2015, in line with its expansion plans. CPC has now reached a throughput of 42.8m tonnes, up from just below 40m tonnes in 2014. Chevron, Lukoil, Shell, BG and ENI own stakes in CPC. The Tengiz oil field if one of Kazakhstan’s most important oil projects.
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(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)
DEC. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Indian gas distributor GAIL said it wants to buy a 5% stake in the TAPI pipeline project, two weeks after construction started on the 1,700km pipeline that will run from Turkmenistan to India. TAPI will pump 33b cubic metres of Turkmen gas to India per year, via Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is expected to come online in 2019. Turkmenistan’s state-owned Turkmengaz is the operator of the project.
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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
JAN. 8 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan completed its $2.5b East-West Pipeline, a project with a stated objective of making gas available for export.
The pipeline can transport around 30b cubic metres of gas to the Turkmen Caspian shore and it could then potentially be linked to a Trans- Caspian Pipeline which connects to another pipeline system to Europe.
But, and this is the catch, there is no plan to build a pipeline across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan from Turkmenistan. It’s a big catch and must be causing policymakers in Turkmenistan to lose sleep.
There is neither an agreement nor funding ready for a trans-Caspian link and bringing gas to the western part of Turkmenistan doesn’t necessarily mean it will continue to Europe.
The Turkmen government hailed the East-West Pipeline as a step towards Europe, but it could be Turkmenistan’s White Elephant. The East- West Pipeline was planned and commissioned during the height of the hype of building a trans-Caspian pipeline. With low oil and gas prices, the world is a very different place today.
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(Editorial from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
DEC. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan launched a new pipeline that will connect its gas fields in the east to the port of Turkmenbashi on the Caspian shore, a move that many consider a step towards exporting gas to Europe.
The 733km, 30b cubic metres pipeline, simply called East-West, will become the main cross-country artery for Turkmen gas, joining several other elements in the country’s existing gas infrastructure.
Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov hailed the project as a significant achievement.
“The new pipeline will give impetus to the industrialisation of the country as well as increase the potential for Turkmenistan’s gas exports to Russia, Iran and Europe,” he said at the opening ceremony.
China buys the majority of Turkmen gas production, roughly 70b cubic metres, but Turkmenistan has also started work on the TAPI pipeline that should run to India.
The biggest prize, though, is selling gas to Europe. Mr Berdymukhamedov has held talks with European officials but no deal has been struck yet. To pump gas to Europe, Turkmenistan needs to build additional pipelines.
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(News report from Issue No. 262, published on Jan. 8 2016)
JAN. 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kyrgyzstan will begin construction work on a new gas pipeline running to China in March, media reported quoting Deputy Economy Minister Aibek Kaliev. The pipeline, which will take several years to build, will complete a route running from gas fields in east Turkmenistan through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and on to Kyrgyzstan and China.
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(News report from Issue No. 263, published on Jan. 15 2016)
DEC. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Swiss company ABB will provide the IT control infrastructure for the TANAP pipeline which will pump 16b cubic metres of gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey and link up with the Europe-bound gas grid (Dec. 15). ABB has already worked on telecoms systems for pipelines, notably with the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. The company did not disclose the value of the contract. TANAP is considered vital to boosting European deliveries of Azerbaijani gas.
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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)
DEC. 15 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – After a decade of talks, Turkmen president Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov and leaders from Afghanistan, Pakistan and India officially started construction of the TAPI pipeline that, they hope, will pump gas from Central Asia to South Asia by end-2018.
The $10b project is ambitious and fraught with risk. For a start nearly half the 1,800km route crosses Afghanistan where security has worsened over the past couple of years. This week the Asian Development Bank cut funding for a Turkmenistan-Tajikistan rail project that also crossed north Afghanistan because of security concerns.
Still, at the official opening ceremony for the TAPI pipeline in Mary, Turkmenistan, Mr Berdymukhamedov was in an upbeat mood.
“TAPI is designed to become a new effective step towards the formation of the modern architecture of global energy security, a powerful driver of economic and social stability in the Asian region,” media quoted him as saying.
By December 2018, so the plan goes, Turkmenistan should start pumping 33b cubic metres of gas a year to India.
But, as Anupama Sen, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, explained for India, TAPI has always been more of a political, rather than gas supply, project. She said India is increasing coal production to meet power demand as it is cheaper than importing gas.
“India’s negotiations over TAPI have been driven by diplomacy,” she said.
India has been trying for years to bolster its influence in Central Asia where Russia and China are so dominant. It lost out in 2013 on a stake in the Kashagan oil field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea to China. TAPI now gives it a stake in Central Asia.
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(News report from Issue No. 261, published on Dec. 20 2015)
DEC. 1 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil completed its retreat from the South Caucasus gas industry with its sale of a 20% stake in the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), part of a pipeline network that will pump gas from Azerbaijan to Europe.
Italian pipeline company Snam bought Statoil’s TAP stake for €208m ($227m), increasing Italy’s commitment in the Southern Gas Corridor, running from Azerbaijan, through Turkey and Greece, to Italy.
Over the past two years, Statoil has quit Azerbaijan,’s gas sector selling its 25% stake in the giant Shah Deniz field and its 15.5% stake in the South Caucasus Pipeline, which transports gas from Shah Deniz to Georgia and Turkey.
Statoil hailed its sale of its stake in TAP as generating value for share- holders but the final price of €208m is lower than the €400m that industry analysts had forecasted over the summer.
Statoil still owns an 8.56% stake in the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field and a 8.71% share in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
DEC. 4 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s Kaztransgas, the state- owned pipeline monopoly, opened a third pipeline pumping gas to China, highlighting Chinese dominance over Central Asia’s energy resources.
Line C will bring the total capacity of the Kazakhstan-China pipeline to 55b cubic metres of gas a year. The Kazakhstan-China pipeline is part of
the 1,300km pipeline network that spans Central Asia. Its main purpose is to pump Turkmen gas to China, although Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan also contribute.
The pipeline cost $1.2b to build and was described by Kaztransgas as the biggest infrastructure project in independent Kazakhstan.
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(News report from Issue No. 259, published on Dec. 4 2015)
