Tag Archives: gas

Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline opens

BAKU/Nov. 30 (The Bulletin) –Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially marked the completion of the Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) which will pump gas from the South Caucasus across Turkey to Europe.

TANAP is the longest section of the 3,500km-long $38b Southern Gas Corridor. The first section connecting the BP-operated Shah Deniz II gas field in the Caspian Sea to Erdine, in eastern Turkey has already been open and next year the final section, the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline, running across Greece and the Balkans to Italy, will open.

In a speech in Ipsala, on the Turkey-Greece border, Mr Aliyev said that the project, which will give Azerbaijan’s economy a major boost through gas sales, was more than just a gas transit pipeline.

“This project leads to cooperation, stability, long-term mutual understanding, and it would be wrong to consider these projects simply as energy projects,” he said according to a statement on his website.

Construction of the pipeline, one of the world’s longest energy pipeline was started four years ago and has had the financial backing of European countries, the EU and various financial institutions such as the EBRD.

European countries want an alternative energy source to Russia, which has been their primary provider of gas.

When the Southern Gas Corridor does open next year it will pump an estimated 10b cubic metres of gas to Europe, enough power for up to 10m households.
TANAP’s shareholders are Azeri state energy company Socar with a 51% stake, Turkish pipeline operator BOTAS with a 30% stake, BP with 12% and Socar Turkey with 7%.
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— This story was first published in issue 431 of the weekly Bulletin on Dec. 9 2019

Aliyev delivers anti-Europe speech

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NOV. 27 (The Bulletin) — In a speech at a university in Baku, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said that he wasn’t seeking closer integration with Europe because it didn’t respect Islamic values, Bloomberg News reported. Relations between Azerbaijan and Europe have been strained for the past few years with European politicians accusing Azerbaijan of cracking down on civil liberties and promoting corruption. Next year Azerbaijan is dues to supply central Europe with gas from its Caspian Sea fields.
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— This story was first published in issue 430 of the weekly Bulletin.

Kazakhstan rejects $1.1b offer to settle Karachaganak row

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ALMATY/NOV. 26 (The Bulletin) — Kazakhstan told the consortium of energy companies developing the Karachaganak gas field in the north of the country that their $1.1b offer to settle a dispute was insufficient.

The dispute has been festering for more than four years, undermining Kazakhstan’s reputation as a place to do business and frustrating the consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell which is developing Karachaganak, one of Kazakhstan’s most high-profile energy projects.

A resolution to the dispute had been announced in October last year, although it now appears to have fallen through.

Media quoted Kazakhstan’s first deputy energy minister Makhambet Dosmukhambetov saying that the government wasn’t happy with the $1.1b offer. He didn’t elaborate as to why the government had pulled back from accepting the payment but he did hint that more negotiations were needed to find a solution to the row.

“New circumstances have been uncovered,” he said.
None of the partners developing Karachaganak — Shell, Lukoil, Chevron and Kazmunaigas — have commented.

Kazakhstan originally filed a $1.6b claim against the consortium developing the Karachaganak consortium in 2015 because it said that it hadn’t been receiving a fair share of the profits.

Over the past few years, Kazakhstan has been trying to gain bigger stakes in energy projects that have been dominated by foreign companies. It has said that when many of the deals were made to develop gas and oil fields in the chaotic post-Soviet 1990s, the Kazakh government was in an unfairly weak position.

Karachaganak, near Aktobe in the north of Kazakhstan, is one of the country’s most important oil and gas projects. It generates around 50% of Kazakhstan’s gas and 18% of the country’s oil.

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— This story was first published in issue 430 of the weekly Bulletin.

Kazakhstan wants to join Russian gas pipeline to China project

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ALMATY/NOV. 25 (The Bulletin) –Kazakhstan wants to join a Russian project to increase gas supplies to China through a new pipeline, media reported by quoting Kazakh PM Askar Mamin.

China has become the biggest buyer of gas from Central Asia. It already buys most of Turkmenistan’s gas and Kazakhstan has been selling increasingly large volumes to China. Russia is due to start pumping gas through a new pipeline called The Power of Siberia to China on Dec. 2 and has already said that it is looking at options to build more gas pipelines running to China.

In comments to media, Mr Mamin said that Kazakhstan wanted The Power of Siberia-2 to run through its territory.

“Based on the environmental situation in the region, we are also considering the option of joining the future Power of Siberia-2 project,” he said. “Currently, gas prices are negotiated. We have offered Russia that (the pipeline) goes through Kazakhstan with an exit to the Chinese market.”

Gazprom signed a $400b deal in 2014 with China to supply 38b cubic metres of gas every year to China over the next 30 years.

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— This story was first published in issue 430 of the weekly Bulletin.

Georgia says it will continue to transit Russian gas to Armenia

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JAN. 18 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgia will continue its role as a transit country for gas supplies between Russia and Armenia, Georgian PM Mamuka Bakhtadze said. Until January 2017, Russia had paid Georgia by giving it 10% of the total gas it sent to neighbouring Armenia. Since 2018, it has paid a fee. This year, after Russia increased gas prices, Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan said he wanted to buy more gas from Iran.
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>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019

Russia increases price of gas to Armenia

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YEREVAN/JAN. 1 (The Conway Bulletin) — After a week of failed negotiations, Russian oil and gas monopoly increased the price of gas that it sells to Armenia by 10%, a move many analysts interpreted as an economic slap on the wrist by the Kremlin to Armenia’s pro-Western government.

In response, Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s leader, said that he was going to intensify negotiations with Iran over increasing gas imports.

“The issue of Iranian gas deliveries is always on the agenda. We will keep discussing this matter until we find a practical and advantageous solution,” Russian news agencies quoted Mr Pashinyan as saying.

He had been in Moscow on Dec. 27 to try to negotiate down the gas price rise, so the Russian statement that it was intent on increasing prices will come be seen as a personal sleight.

Gazprom said that from Jan. 1 2019, Armenia would pay $165 per 1,000 cubic metres of gas, up from $150.

Since taking over as Armenia’s PM after a peaceful revolution in April and May 2018, Mr Pashinyan has had a strained relationship with Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been a frequent visitor to the Kremlin, has pushed for greater integration with Russia and has also sent a handful of de-miners and doctors to support Russia’s reconstruction efforts in Syria.

But his natural inclination is to lean to the West and his supporters are even more pro-Western. Last year, police in Armenia arrested several former senior pro-Russia Armenian government officials, including former President Robert Kocharyan and the head of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation, Yuri Khachaturov, and charged them with abuse of power over the shooting dead of anti-government protesters in 2008.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has said that the charges against the former senior Armenian officials are politically motivated.
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>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019

Platts expects ACG to continue to decline in 2019

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DEC. 26 (The Conway Bulletin) — Platts the energy-specialist news service said it expected oil output at Azerbaijan’s Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli (ACG) Caspian Sea field to continue to decline in 2019. ACG is critical to Azerbaijan’s oil production but has been on the decline for the past eight years or so despite BP, its operator, spending millions of dollars patching up its ageing infrastructure. Platts said it expected ACG to produce 510,000 barrels of oil per day in 2019, down from 530,000bpd in 2018.
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>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019

Putin says Russia may join TAPI gas project

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MOSCOW/DEC. 21 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted at his annual press conference that he be may be willing to support the TAPI project that aims to pump gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to India and Pakistan.

Russian support for TAPI would give the project, devised and pushed strongly by Turkmenistan, a major boost. It comes at a time when Russia is mending damaged relations with Turkmenistan. Gazprom has said it will resume imports of gas from Turkmenistan for the first time since 2016.

At the televised annual press conference, Mr Putin said: “As far as we can, we will contribute to this process (building a stable Afghanistan), including by developing economic cooperation with Afghanistan, by taking part in various international projects, such as, for example, the TAPI.”

China is currently Turkmenistan’s dominant gas client.

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>>This story was first published in issue 395 of The Conway Bulletin on Dec. 23 2018

Turkmenistan says to re-start gas exports to Russia

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OCT. 10 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan will resume sending gas to Russia in January, Alexei Miller, the Gazprom CEO, was quoted by official Turkmen media as saying on a trip to Ashgabat, giving Turkmenistan’s Pres. Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov a much-needed political boost (Oct. 10).

Turkmen gas exports to Russia were slashed in 2014 during a row over pricing and cut altogether in 2016 during a Russian economic downturn that was triggered by an energy price collapse.

The cut hurt Turkmenistan economically and left it overly reliant on China as its only gas supply client. Its economy has also been hard hit by the drop in energy prices. The economic news coming out of Turkmenistan has been dire, with Mr Berdymukhamedov being forced to cut Soviet-era subsidies on utilities.

Mr Miller said exact details of new gas imports needed to be worked out.

“The intergovernmental agreement between Russia and Turkmenistan on cooperation in the gas sphere is valid until the end of 2018. It was paused for commercial reasons and will be renewed by the end of 2018,” Mr Miller was quoted as saying by official Turkmen media. “In this regard, we discussed the resumption of the procurement of Turkmen gas by Gazprom, which will start in January 2019.”

Analysts speculated on the timing of Russia resuming gas exports from Turkmenistan. Some said that it was linked to Russia’s efforts to dampen the increased lure of gas sales to Europe from the region.

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>>This story was first published in issue 388 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 17 2018

Kazakhstan to double gas exports to China

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OCT.15 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s state-owned KazTransKaz and China’s PetroChina signed a 5-year deal to double Kazakh gas imports into China to 10b cubic metres of gas per year from 2019. Kazakhstan has increased its gas production this year to 41.45b cubic metres in the first nine months of the year, up 6%. Of this it will export more than a quarter.

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>>This story was first published in issue 388 of The Conway Bulletin on Oct. 17 2018