Tag Archives: hydrocarbons

Kazakhstan to postpone Kazmunaigas IPO, say sources

ALMATY/Feb. 8 (The Conway Bulletin) — — Kazakhstan will postpone the IPO of state-owned oil and gas company Kazmunaigas because of poor market conditions, two sources close to the deal told Reuters.

They said that investor interest had waned for a London IPO for Kazmunaigas, as Kazakhstan had been touting last year. Kazakh officials had launched a road-show to drum up support in 2018 and had talked of selling as much as 20% of the company to raise around $6b.

The Kazmunaigas sale was supposed to have been the centrepiece of a sell off of various Kazakh state-owned assets, including nuclear agency Kazatomprom, which listed last year on the London Stock Exchange, and Air Astana, scheduled to list this year.

Reuters quoted data which said that the value of global IPOs had dropped by 83% to $2.6b in January 2019 compared to January 2018.

Kazmunaigas declined to comment.
END

>This story was first published in issue 399 of The Conway Bulletin on Feb. 8 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019

Nostrum Oil & Gas expects lower output in 2019

Leave a Reply

JAN. 29 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan-focused oil producer Nostrum Oil & Gas said that it expected lower revenues in 2018 because of a 4% decline in production. The announcement by the AIM-listed producer follows 2018 results that already showed a sharp fall in production to 31,254 barrels of oil equivalent, down from 39,199 barrels in 2017.
END

>This story was first published in issue 398 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 31 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019

Turkmenistan to start exporting oil via Russia

Leave a Reply

JAN. 25 (The Conway Bulletin) — As part of improved bilateral relations, Turkmenistan will start pumping its oil via Russia, reducing flows through the BTC pipeline that runs from Azerbaijan, through Georgia to Turkey, analysts told Reuters. The reduction in Turkmen flows will also lower the quality of the oil from BTC as its oil is considered high-quality.
END

>This story was first published in issue 398 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 31 2019
Copyright The Conway Bulletin 2019

Georgia says it will continue to transit Russian gas to Armenia

Leave a Reply

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.
END

>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019

Russia’s Tatneft sets up Kazakh subsidiary

Leave a Reply

JAN. 11 (The Conway Bulletin) — Russian energy company Tatneft said it had registered a subsidiary in Uzbekistan, although it did not elaborate on its business aims. Tatneft is one of the biggest energy companies in Russia and also operates 691 petrol stations across Russia, Belarus and Ukraine
END

>>This story was first published in issue 397 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 20 2019

Oil shipments drop at Batumi

Leave a Reply

JAN. 3 (The Conway Bulletin) — Oil shipments from the Georgian Black Sea port of Batumi fell by 51.2% in 2018, Reuters reported by quoting an unnamed official at the terminal which is operated by Kazakh oil and gas company Kazmunaigas. Azerbaijan’s decision to push oil shipments through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which it part-owns and a volume increase for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium from Kazakhstan to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, are the main drivers of the drop-off at Batumi.
END

>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019

Kazakh energy minister calls for oil prices to be stabilised

Leave a Reply

DEC. 26 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh energy minister Kanat Bozumayev said that he expected OPEC and other major oil exporters to work to stabilise oil prices at the start of this year after they dropped away steeply at the end of 2018 mainly because of oversupply. Oil is one of Kazakhstan’s main exports but it is not big enough to be a price-maker and instead has to follow the bigger energy producers’ lead and act as a price-taker.
END

>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019

Russia increases price of gas to Armenia

Leave a Reply

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.
END

>>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

Leave a Reply

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.
END

>>This story was first published in issue 396 of The Conway Bulletin on Jan. 11 2019

Putin says Russia may join TAPI gas project

Leave a Reply

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.

ENDS

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