OCT. 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia’s energy minister Kakha Kaladze met with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller in Milan, their second meeting in a month to discuss Georgian gas supplies from Russia. Georgia needs to increase gas imports to meet demand but buying gas from Russia, they fought a war in 2008, has irritated many people.
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(News report from Issue No. 254, published on Oct. 30 2015)
OCT. 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Uz-Kor Gas, a joint venture between South Korean and Uzbek companies, has finished building a $3.9b natural gas processing plant in Uzbekistan, a project that will improve commercial and diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Located in the Karakalpakstan region of north-western Uzbekistan, the Ustyurt Gas Chemical Complex will become the biggest petrochemical complex in Europe and Asia. Ustyurt includes a new gas field and a petrochemical plant. Its production will be mostly earmarked for the export market.
Companies from South Korea and Uzbekistan have been working on the project since 2006 through a joint- venture that includes Lotte Chemical, part of the Lotte Group, state-owned Korea Gas and Uzbekistan’s energy company Uzbekneftegaz.
Huh Soo-young, CEO of Lotte Chemical, said production would begin in 2016.
“From extracting liquefied natural gas in the upstream, to cracking and processing LNG into petrochemical products in the downstream, we have successfully built up a vertical integration system,” Mr Huh told the Korea Herald.
The plant will receive around 3.6mn tonnes of liquefied natural gas each year from a field in Surgil, around 100km away from the complex.
Lotte Chemical has predicted it will earn around 1tn won ($890mn) each year from the new project. Mr Huh said the complex would only be profitable as long as energy prices stay at current levels.
“As long as crude oil prices remain above $40, our petrochemical products based on low-cost ethane will remain competitive in the global market,” he said.
Uzbekistan and South Korea have been improving their commercial ties. In May, Uzbek president Islam Karimov used his visit foreign trip after winning re-election to travel to South Korea to close deals worth $7.7b.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Hundreds of people demonstrated in central Tbilisi against a potential deal with Gazprom to supply gas to Georgia. The demonstration was a response to a meeting last month between the Georgian government and Gazprom. Georgia and Russia fought a war in 2008 and relations are still strained.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Uz-Kor Gas, a joint venture between South Korean and Uzbek companies, has completed a $3.9b natural gas processing plant.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 20 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan said construction of the TAPI pipeline that will, it is hoped, pump gas from fields in the east of the country to consumers in India would start in 2016. Earlier this year, Turkmenistan had pushed for TAPI to start by the end of 2015. TAPI is a $10b project that will cross Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 17 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Several Japanese companies signed a framework agreement with the Turkmen government to supply equipment to the Galkynysh gas field, one of the largest in the world. Mitsubishi, Chiyoda, Sojits, Itochu and JGC are among the companies involved in the expansion of Galkynysh. Turkmenistan wants to expand Galkynysh to pump gas along a planned pipeline to India.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct. 23 2015)
OCT. 10 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Georgia is in talks with Russia’s Gazprom to import gas, Georgian energy minister Kakha Kaladze told media, highlighting the improved relations between the two neighbours. Georgia currently exports nearly all its gas from Azerbaijan although it hosts a pipeline pumping gas from Russia to Armenia.
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(News report from Issue No. 253, published on Oct.16 2015)
OCT. 6 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — KazTransGas, Kazakhstan’s state owned gas distributor, warned Georgia it might take their dispute over its subsidiary to international arbitration if Georgia failed to restart negotiations. KazTransGas is looking for compensation for the $130m it spent on its subsidiary KazTransGas-Tbilisi in 2006-09 before the Georgian government took control of the company.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 5 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — State-owned Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation said it will explore Kazakhstan for mineral deposits. Preliminary investigations will be conducted, jointly with Kazakhstan’s state-owned company Kazgeologiya, in 2016. Japan has bought large amounts of oil from Kazakhstan this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)
OCT. 3 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The Turkmen state-owned natural gas company Turkmengaz terminated an engineering contract with Orgregionproyekt, a Russian company, signed in 2011, local media reported. It’s unclear if the cancelled contract was linked to the economy or not.
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(News report from Issue No. 251, published on Oct. 9 2015)