OCT. 3 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Media reports suggested that Kazakhstan’s headline oil producing project, the Kashagan site in the Caspian Sea, will not start production until 2017. Kazakh officials have said that they expect the project to start production in 2016 but unnamed insiders have said this is unlikely.
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(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)
OCT. 7 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Repairs and upgrades to Kazakhstan’s three oil refineries should mean that by 2016 or 2017 the country is self-sufficient in petrol, Kazakh energy minister Vladimir Shkolnik said in comments to parliament. Kazakhstan’s energy ministry has ruled out building a fourth oil refinery to meet demand.
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(News report from Issue No. 203, published on Oct. 8 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Russian energy companies Lukoil and Bashneft will supply Kazakhstan with extra petrol and diesel fuel to make up for the current shortfall, Russian news agency RIA-Novosti quoted Russia’s energy minister, Alexander Novak, as saying. Kazakhstan has a shortage of refinery capacity which is causing shortages.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev hinted at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin that he may not be as enamoured with green energy as he has suggested.
This is important because Kazakhstan’s government has spent time and money promoting itself as a standard bearer for Green Energy, including devoting much of the sales pitch of its centrepiece event EXPO-2017 in Astana to it.
“I personally do not believe in alternative energy, such as wind, and solar,” media quoted Mr Nazarbayev as saying after meeting Mr Putin in Atyrau on the Caspian Sea coast.
“I think the shale euphoria also does not make much sense. Oil and gas are our main horses and we do not need to be afraid that they are fossil fuels.”
This view may not be that surprising, afterall the economies of both Kazakhstan and Russia are based on oil and gas exports.
Even so, Kazakhstan has given the impression it wants to move on from its reliance on oil and gas for its wealth.
Throughout Kazakhstan’s cities advertise EXPO-2017 with posters carrying the slogan ‘The Energy of the Future’ against a background of a green valley filled with wind turbines and solar panels.
Kazakhstan’s future energy policy is further complicated because it has agreed a deal with Russia to build a new nuclear power station.
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(News report from Issue No. 202, published on Oct. 1 2014)
SEPT. 22 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – French energy company Total will start oil production at its Absheron site in the Caspian Sea in 2021, Reuters quoted Azerbaijani energy minister Natiq Aliyev as saying, a year later than stated. Total owns 40% of Absheron, Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR also owns 40% and GDF Suez owns 20%.
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(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
SEPT. 19 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan increased oil exports through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline by 70% in the first eight months of the year compared to the same period in 2013, media quoted the national statistics agency as saying. BTC pumps oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey and then on to Europe.
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(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
SEPT. 17 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmenistan increased its oil products production by nearly 2% in the first half of the year, media reported quoting official statistics. Although a marginal increase it is important because Central Asia is experience a general shortage of oil products.
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(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)
SEPT. 16 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan’s deputy energy minister, Uzakbai Karabalin, has said fuel shortage will continue despite government attempts to buy extra petrol from Azerbaijan and other neighbours, media reported. He said a third of Kazakhstan’s petrol came from Russia which was dealing with an economic slowdown.
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(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept. 17 2014)
SEPT. 8 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan may be about to play an unforeseen, but important, role in Ukraine’s civil war.
Virtually unnoticed by the media, Ukraine’s coal and energy minister, Yuriy Proban, visited Baku for an unofficial meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart. He was, basically, asking for help from Azerbaijan.
Ukraine’s economy is a mess. It had been reliant on coal mining from the Donbass region but with the civil war centred on Donbass, it is now limping along.
It had also earned a substantial fee for being a transit country for oil and gas supplies from Russia to Europe. That too has dried up, meaning that it both has to generate cash from elsewhere and also buy in oil and petrol.
According to analysts, only about 20% of Ukraine’s refining capacity is currently in use.
And this where Azerbaijan, could in theory, come in.
Mr Probin said that he was in Baku partially to ask for Azerbaijan to halp make up the shortfall.
“We could quite quickly increase the processed amounts if Azerbaijan has the available resources,” Russian news agency ITAR-Tass quoted him as saying, referring to the volumes of refined oil produced in Ukraine.
For Azerbaijan, there are two main issues to consider before potentially increasing supplies to Ukraine. Firstly, how to get any oil shipments there, possibly via Georgia’s Black Sea port of Batumi, and secondly how would Russia react? Azerbaijan-Russia relations are already strained. Supplying Ukraine with oil, may strain them further.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)
SEPT. 9 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – In a thinly veiled warning to the BP-led ACG oilfields, Rovnag Abdullayev, head of Azerbaijani energy company SOCAR, said he expected its output to hit 30m tonnes this year and next year. ACG is key to Azerbaijan’s oil wealth but output has been falling.
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(News report from Issue No. 199, published on Sept. 10 2014)