Tag Archives: Kazakhstan

Kazmunaigas production drops by 1.3%

OCT. 25 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — KMG EP, a London-traded subsidiary of Kazakhstan’s state owned Kazmunaigas, said its oil production in the first nine months of the year fell by 1.3% to 9.1m tonnes, compared to the same period last year. Importantly, production from Ozenmunaigas and Embamunaigas, two of its loss-making subsidiaries in the west of the country, grew by 1% in this period.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Stock market: Nostrum Oil and Gas

OCT. 28 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Amsterdam-based Nostrum Oil & Gas continues to navigate through the troubled waters of low oil prices. Its stock has rallied heavily in recent weeks.

The positive trend in the London stock market could be tied to the promises of a better 2017, when the company aims to complete an expansion and boost production.

CEO Kai-Uwe Kessel is confident production will more than double in just two years. “Our main focus continues to be the completion of GTU3, which is on track to be delivered on budget in 2017, and which will more than double our production capacity,” Mr Kessel said in a statement.

In the first part of 2016, however, average daily production fell to around 36,000 barrels. Now the company says that it expects to boost output to 40,000 barrels/day by year end. Sustained low oil prices, together with production and sales hiccups, have hit revenues, down 35% in the first nine months of 2016 to $240m, compared to the same period last year.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Kazakhstan signs nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia

OCT. 26 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev visited Saudi Arabia where he signed deals with King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, including a deal to boost nuclear cooperation. Kazakhstan is one of the biggest producers of uranium in the world and has been trying to build up a market to sell to.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 302, published on Oct. 28 2016)

Car sales in Kazakhstan, a leading economic indicator, fail to pick up

ALMATY, OCT. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhs bought just under 31,000 cars in the first nine months of the year, a drop of 59% compared to the same period last year.

The car market is a key indicator of Kazakhstan’s economic health and its collapse since an oil price crash in mid-2014 has mirrored the Kazakh economy. In Q1 2014, by comparison, Kazakhs bought 35,000 new cars, easily outstripping total sales for the first nine months of this year.

Analysts have said that consumers are not buying cars because of a 50% cut in the value of the tenge and higher inflation which have made them vastly more expensive.

Putting a positive spin on the news, Oleg Alfyorov, president of Kazavtoprom, the car industry union, said that he thought the market had bottomed-out and that sales would start to rise again soon.

“Kazakhstan’s car market has been in a state of recession since the second half of 2014. But this year, sales have reached a market plateau, from which retailers can start moving upwards,” he said.

Mr Alfyorov also pointed out the increased share of locally produced cars in total sales, which grew to 24%, almost double the share in 2014.

“Quarterly Kazakhs bought about 10,000 new cars. This figure has been stable since the beginning of the year.

At the same time, an increasing number of buyers preferred locally- assembled cars,” he said.

Still, this is a long way from where the industry was a few years ago when foreign car makers were eager to get a foothold in Kazakhstan’s growing manufacturing sector to launch into what they thought would be a lucrative Central Asian market.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)

Arcelormittal’s troubles in Kazakhstan

OCT. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, has shown signs of trouble in its operations in Kazakhstan due to the fall in commodity prices.

In early 2014, it laid off around 1,000 workers. The subsequent devaluation of the tenge currency seemed to have fixed its cost problems but as the US dollar strengthened against all commodities, effectively pushing prices down, the company felt the bite of lower revenues.

In 2015, it cut worker salaries by 25% only to later face a court order that deemed the move illegal. Later in 2015, when the tenge sank after the Central Bank ditched the peg to the US dollar in August, ArcelorMittal Temirtau’s former boss Vijay Mahadevan said that the tenge value needed to be even lower for the company to effectively cut costs.

But exchange rate fixes are only one-off solutions that cannot ensure long-term stability.

Earlier this year, the company predicted a 13% drop in net income and cancelled a promised pay raise to its employees, lowering their benefits instead. And in September, the government lodged a veiled accusation against ArcelorMittal Temirtau for allegedly slowing production to keep revenues low and avoid a higher tax bill. The company said this week it had resumed full production, to avoid further problems.

But the headaches are still there, despite the potential growth of the Iranian market, vital for ArcelorMittal, after most sanctions were lifted this year.

Besides the thousands that it currently employs, the plant in Temirtau holds symbolic value, as President Nursultan Nazarbayev worked there in his youth.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)

Kazakhstan looks to ban Salafism

ALMATY, OCT. 14 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan appeared to signal that it would ban Salafism, a form of Islam, after its new minister for religious affairs, Nurlan Yermekbayev, described it as “unacceptable”.

Mr Yermekbayev’s comments, at his first press conference as minister for religious freedom, will strengthen analysts’ views that the ministry, created last month, was designed to clamp down on religious freedom.

“We consider that for Kazakhstan, Salafism is an unacceptable and destructive religious movement. In

general, Kazakhstan’s society has a negative attitude to this alien understanding of faith, leading to radicalism,” the official Astana Times newspaper quoted him as saying.

“Our future work will focus on preventing the spread of literature and the work of the websites promoting the ideology of Salafism.”

Salafism is an ultra-conservative form of Islam that has its roots in Egypt. It has been blamed for the spread of radical Islam.

Previously, Wahhabism, has been blamed for encouraging a series of terrorist attacks in Kazakhstan and banned by the government.

But Kazakh officials have now blamed a series of gun attacks in Aktobe, in the west of the country, in June on a group of Salafists.

Kazakhstan, like its neighbours, has been clamping down on pious Muslims, increasingly worried that they are destabilising the country and acting as a possible fifth column.

Human rights groups have described the clamp-downs as attacks on human rights and free speech.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)

Kazakh energy company drills wells

OCT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Roxi Petroleum, a Kazakhstan-based oil and gas company, said it had successfully drilled new wells at its BNG Contract Area, a group of oil fields in western Kazakhstan. Roxi said the drilling of the A6 deep well had been challenging, but that the expansion of the field was continuing as planned. On the day of the announcement, its stock price increased by 18% to 10.5p in London.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)

Alleged coup-plotter in Kazakhstan rejects accusations

OCT. 17 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – In his trial for allegedly funding an attempted coup earlier this year in Kazakhstan, Shymkent-based businessman Tokhtar Tuleshov said that although he had given protesters demonstrating against land reforms $100,000, he had not intended to organise an overthrow of the government. A screenshot of Mr Tuleshov, once one of the richest men in Kazakhstan whose wealth was built on brewing beer, showed him in handcuffs looking gaunt while he gave evidence to the court in Astana via a video-link.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)

Kazakhstan retiriertes Hijab ban

OCT. 19 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan said that it had reiterated a ban on hijabs at school despite a number of complaints from parents since the ban was introduced in January. Kazakhstan is officially a secular states although the vast majority of people are Muslim. Headscarves have also become a more common sight on the streets of Kazakh cities over the past few years.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)

Kazakh oil pipeline operator to allocate its route

OCT. 18 2016 (The Conway Bulletin) – KazTransOil, Kazakhstan’s state owned oil pipeline operator, said that the first shipments of oil from Kashagan will be allocated to the Atyrau-Samara pipeline and sold at the Russian port of Ust-Luga, near St. Petersburg. Production at Kashagan re-started last week after years of delay. In October, the consortium plans to pump at 90,000 barrels/day. The Kazakh government is banking on Kashagan to propel it into the Premier League of oil producers.

ENDS

(News report from Issue No. 301, published on Oct. 21 2016)