Tag Archives: hydrocarbons

Kazakh state energy producer to boost investments

APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In a clear sign of renewed confidence that oil prices will stay at around $50-55/barrel, KMG EP, the London-listed division of the Kazakh state energy producer Kazmunaigas said that it was going to raise its capital expenditure by 12% to 133b tenge ($369m). The company said that the extra investment would be used to improve the efficiency of existing projects.

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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)

EnerMech secures BP deal in Azerbaijan

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APRIL 4 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Aberdeen-based oil and gas services company EnerMech said that it had won contracts worth £40m ($50m) in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea to manage BP’s crane operations. John Guy, EnerMech’s regional director for the Middle East, Asia and Caspian, said that the company employs 300 people in the region and sees Azerbaijan as an important, and growing, part of its business.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Georgia to buy all its gas from Azerbaijan

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APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Georgian energy minister Kakha Kaladze said that Georgia would not purchase any more gas from Gazprom until the end of the year and will instead buy all its gas from Azerbaijan. Gas purchases from Gazprom have been controversial for Georgia after it signed a deal at the beginning of the year changing the arrangement from a barter deal to a paid-for deal. Mr Kaladze has refused to name the price agreed with Gazprom for gas purchases, fuelling speculation that he had agreed to pay too high a price. Mr Kaladze has always maintained that the deal gives Georgia more flexibility, including being able to choose how much gas to buy from Gazprom.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Lukoil hits gas production landmark in Uzbekistan

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APRIL 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russia’s Lukoil said it had reached what it described as a landmark production level of 40b cubic metres of gas at its projects in Uzbekistan, more than two-thirds of total Uzbek gas output. It said that most of this gas was produced at its two fields near Bukhara — Khauzak-Shady and Kuvachi-Alat. Lukoil is one of Uzbekistan’s biggest foreign investors. Uzbekistan has proven gas reserves of 1.1 trillion cubic metres, according to BP. This is roughly the same as Azerbaijan.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Azerbaijan BTC throughput falls

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APRIL 5 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil and gas company Socar said that the amount of oil pumped through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) had fallen by more than 11% in the first three months of the year, media reported. The fall is linked to a drop in oil being produced by fields in the region, a drop triggered by the collapse in oil prices from $110/barrel in mid-2014 to under $30/barrel in Jan. 2016 and around $50/barrel now. Azearbaijan has exported less oil via BTC and Kazakh producers have turned to the cheaper CPC pipeline that runs around the Caspian Sea to Novorossiya on Russia’s Black Sea coast.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)f

Gazprom pays knockdown price for Uzbek gas

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APRIL 12 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian media reported that Gazprom will pay only $125/1,000 cubic metres of gas from Uzbekistan, a relatively low amount. The supply deal between Uzbekistan and Gazprom had been struck at the beginning of April when Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev visited Moscow and was hailed as a groundbreaking agreement. Analysts, though, have said that a price of $125/1,000 cubic metres is low and represents only $2.5b/year for the five year contract.

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(News report from Issue No. 324, published on April 13 2017)

Kazakhstan-focused oil producer posts 47% revenue fall

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APRIL 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Tethys, the embattled London- listed oil producer with interests in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Georgia, said that its revenues from oil and gas sales had fallen by 47% in 2016 to $11.7m. It said that the drop was due to a fall in production and a devaluation of the tenge in the second half of 2015. Tethys sells most of its oil in Kazakhstan’s domestic market.

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Refined oil exports drop in Azerbaijan

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APRIL 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s exports of refined oil products fell by 18.3% in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the year before to 286,000 tonnes, media reported quoting state- owned SOCAR. SOCAR didn’t give a reason for the drop but oil sales and refined oil products are a vital part of Azerbaijan’s economy and foreign earning power. Azerbaijan, like the rest of the region, is trying to recover from an economic slump.

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

BP wants contract extension on Azerbaijan’s ACG oil fields

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APRIL 1 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Bob Dudley, the BP CEO, said that he had signed a letter of intent with the other partners of Azerbaijan’s ACG to extend the contract to operate the country’s biggest oil producing site by 25 years to 2050.

He said a final contract still needed to be signed but that this was likely this year. ACG is critical to Azerbaijan’s economy although its production rate has been falling over the past few years, a drop blamed on aging infrastructure, frustrating Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev.

“I think it’ll happen this year,” media quoted Mr Dudley as saying of the ACG contract extension.

“The contract expires in 2024, but you don’t want activity to drop off in the end of the contract period.”

BP owns a 35.78% stake in ACG (Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli). The other shareholders are Chevron (11.28%), Inpex (10.96%), AzACG (11.65 per- cent), Statoil (8.55 percent), Exxon (8 percent), TPAO (6.75 percent), Itochu (4.3 percent) and ONGC (2.72 percent).

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(News report from Issue No. 323, published on April 6 2017)

Condor restarts oil wells in Kazakhstan

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MARCH 22 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Canada-based Condor Petroleum resumed production at its oil wells in Kazakhstan in the second half of last year, it said in a full-year trading update, around 15 months after it cut production because oil prices had dropped too low to make it economical. Combined output from these two fields, Shoba and Taskuduk, is tiny at 588 barrels per day but it does indicate a renewed confidence in the Kazakh oil sector. Also in Kazakhstan, Condor has applied to extend its exploration licence over the Zharkamys exploration area which officially expired at the end of last year.

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(News report from Issue No. 322, published on March 27 2017)