Tag Archives: hydrocarbons

Azerbaijan’s SOCAR wants to sell stake

OCT. 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – SOCAR Turkey Enerji, a subsidiary of Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR, said it will consider selling part of a 5.32% stake it directly owns in Petkim, a petrochemical complex, near Izmir. SOCAR Turkey is also considering participating in the construction of the new Star refinery together with Russia’s Rosneft. Sustained low oil prices have pushed SOCAR to reshuffle their investments abroad.

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(News report from Issue No. 300, published on Oct. 14 2016)

Kazakhstan’s oil field produces first oil for 3 years

ALMATY, OCT. 12 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Kashagan Caspian Sea oil field, Kazakhstan’s Great White economic hope, started producing oil for the first time since 2013, lifting spirits after a tough couple of years for the Kazakh economy Energy minister Kanat Bozumbayev confirmed the re-start of the $50b Kashagan, which was shut down in 2013 after a couple of weeks of operations because of leaky pipes.

“I checked this morning and production is active from four wells, yielding approximately 90,000 barrels/day,” he told media.

Kashagan is one of the biggest international oil finds of the the last 30 years and Kazakhstan hopes that it will propel the country into the premier league of oil producers.

At peak production, Kashagan aims for an output of 370,000 barrels/day. Total Kazakh production is currently 1.5b barrels/day.

Eni, Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, CNPC, Inpex and Kazmunaigas operate the Kashagan field.

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(News report from Issue No. 300, published on Oct. 14 2016)

Kazakh oil service company loses money

OCT. 11 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Oil service companies owned by Kazakhstan’s Kazmunaigas posted a 12% drop in revenues over the past two years, mostly due to sustained low oil prices, Kazmunaigas chairman Sauat Mynbayev said. Mr Mynbayev said that this trend should have triggered layoffs, but under government mandate the companies will not cut jobs. Loss- making Ozenmunaigas will maintain 9,500 workers on its payroll.

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(News report from Issue No. 300, published on Oct. 14 2016)

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan’s oil and gas

OCT. 7 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – As shown in our charts this week, markets were upbeat, especially due to a steady increase in oil prices over the past two weeks, following a landmark agreement among the world’s top oil exporters.

OPEC, the exporters’ lobby group, decided to cut oil output by around 1.5% in an effort to put pressure on the US dollar and send oil prices higher.

This is OPEC’s first production cut in eight years, since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. And the decision is an important one.

It marks a formal agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose diplomatic spats had been at the core of OPEC’s inability to decide in the past year.

It also has an important effect on countries around the Caspian Sea.

Azerbaijan has quickly eroded its reserve base, pumping its oil money into the budget to contain its currency crisis. This could have not lasted much longer. Now, if oil prices continue to float around $50/barrel, a good 20% higher than two months ago, transfers from the oil fund can slow down and the leadership can breathe.

Perhaps out of excitement from the impending re-start of Kashagan in the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan is also rallying on higher oil prices, cutting interest rates and transfers from its oil fund into the budget.

Two caveats, however, are needed for Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. First, don’t believe in any proposal from these two non- OPEC countries on freezing or cutting production. If their output falls it is because of economics.

Second, you need to wait until their mega projects, from Kashagan to Shah Deniz II, come online before making long-term assumptions on the energy might held by Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Bashneft looks for fuel in Kazakhstan

OCT. 4 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian oil company Bashneft said it will explore the possibility of buying into the petrol station market in Kazakhstan. Bashneft already operates in Kazakhstan, where it produces around 500,000 tonnes of petroleum products. Sales representative Kirill Kasterin said the company now wants to sell petrol under its own brand. Bashneft owns around 70 filling stations in Russia.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Azerbaijan to invest in Bulgarian gas storage

SEPT. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s state-owned energy company SOCAR could soon enter the Bulgarian gas storage market, a potential bridgehead for its plans to construct a pipeline that will pump gas from the Caspian Sea to European consumers.

Bulgarian officials said that SOCAR has expressed interest in participating in the expansion of the Chiren storage facility. The government plans a €200m investment to double its capacity to 1b cubic metres. The underground gas storage facility at Chiren links up with Bulgaria’s network, making it a potentially valuable asset for SOCAR, which agreed to send 1b cubic metres of gas to Bulgaria by 2020. Azerbaijan wants to pump gas to

Europe via the so-called Southern Gas Corridor, a network of pipelines from Azerbaijan through Turkey, Greece and Albania to Italy.

Bulgaria hopes to receive Azerba- ijani gas through the construction of the Interconnector Greece-Bulgaria which will feed off the TANAP pipe- line that will form the backbone of the Southern Gas Corridor stretching from Azerbaijan to Italy.

Azerbaijan views Europe as an important next client for its gas.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Gazprom to apply discount to Kyrgyzstan

OCT. 1 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Gazprom Kyrgyzstan representatives said they would apply a 1% discount on gas supplies to households and industries to reflect the strengthening of the som currency. Gazprom Kyrgyzstan, a subsidiary of Russia’s gas giant Gazprom which owns Kyrgyzstan’s gas distribution network, can revise gas tariffs on a monthly basis. Gas prices have become a political issue in the region, often sparking protests against proposed price rises.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Kashagan to increase Kazakhstan’s oil shipments

OCT. 6 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Natig Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s energy minister, said that, once operational, the Kashagan offshore will increase Kazakhstan’s oil shipments to Baku to 150,000 barrels of oil/day, feeding into the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Mr Aliyev’s statement relied on the assumption that the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which pumps oil around the Caspian Sea to the Russian port of Novorossiysk, and the Kazakhstan-China pipeline will not be able to absorb the additional 370,000 barrels of oil/day that Kashagan will produce at its peak. Kazakhstan has slashed oil shipments from Aktau to Baku this year.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

Azerbaijan’s Parliament passes TANAP

SEPT. 30 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan’s parliament approved a deal to build the TANAP pipeline across Turkey, a long-overdue step in the development of the project to pump gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe. An initial agreement on TANAP, a $10b gas pipeline, was signed in May 2014.

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(News report from Issue No. 299, published on Oct. 7 2016)

EBRD threatens pipeline funds if Azerbaijan fails to improve transparency

SEPT. 27 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – The EBRD said it may withhold funds for a pipeline linking gas fields in the Caspian Sea to consumers in Europe until Azerbaijan agreed to provide more transparency into its state linked energy companies.

Taking a tough stance, the EBRD, a London-based intra-governmental bank set up during the collapse of the Soviet Union to fund business and infrastructure projects, said unless Azerbaijan complied with the Extrac- tive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), it would withhold $1.5b ear- marked for the TANAP pipeline.

The EBRD’s stance casts fresh doubts over the Azerbaijani leadership’s commitment to transparency into its business dealings.

Riccardo Puliti, the EBRD’s managing director for energy, said that EITI, considered a global benchmark for transparency in the extractive sectors, would consider whether Azerbaijan had made progress at its next meeting in Kazakhstan in October.

“In the case of TANAP, it is important that this progress takes place. If there is no progress it will be quite difficult to justify a large amount of financing,” he told Turkish media.

Last year, the EITI downgraded Azerbaijan from ‘compliant’ to ‘candidate’ country and criticised it for a lack of transparency.

TANAP will link Azerbaijan’s pipe- line network to Greece via Turkey, forming part of the Southern Gas Corridor. SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state- owned energy company, owns a 58% stake in TANAP, Turkey’s Botas (30%) and BP (12%) own the rest. TANAP will link with TAP which will pump the gas to Italy.

Azerbaijan has yet to react to the EBRD’s statement.

Aliya Tskhay, a researcher focus- ing on Azerbaijan at the University of St Andrews said that the EBRD may have been trying to encourage Azerbaijan to engage more closely with the EITI.

“The EBRD request seems to be an encouragement for Azerbaijan’s government to still be part of the EITI, despite a status downgrade last year,” she said.

TANAP will cost $10b to build, while TAP has a price tag of around $5b.

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(News report from Issue No. 298, published on Sept. 30 2016)