MAY 20 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — In yet another sign of improving Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan relations, the countries’ state-run energy companies pledged to jointly develop Caspian Sea oil and gas fields. It’s unclear if this deal has a practical bent to it or if it is designed simply to be an eye- catching bilateral deal.
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(News report from Issue No. 330, published on May 28 2017)
MAY 10 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — BP’s Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field bloc in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea produced 581,000 barrels of oil per day in the first three months of the year, it said in a statement. This is a significant drop compared to the year before when output was recorded at 651,000 barrels per day. BP has been under pressure from the Azerbaijani authorities to boost production at SCG, the country’s main oil producers and the latest figures will likely irritate Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 11 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Kazakhstan has started shipping oil through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline for the first time since mid-2015, media reported quoting the Azerbaijani energy ministry, an indication that the country’s oil production has picked up. BTC is considered an important part of the region’s energy infrastructure as it pushes oil from the Caspian Sea to Turkey. Kazakhstan had cut its oil production as prices fell. The Azerbaijani energy ministry said that 90,000 tonnes of oil from Kazakhstan have been pumped through BTC already this year.
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(News report from Issue No. 328, published on May 12 2017)
MAY 3 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Employees at Uzbekistan’s state- owned UzGasOil network of petrol stations have not been paid their salaries, the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website reported. It said that in a rare show of worker defiance in Uzbekistan, the UzGasOil employees had complained directly to the management about their unpaid salaries. RFE/RL quoted one worker saying that he was owed about $125 for two months work. RFE/RL contacted UzGasOil, rebranded from Uzbekneftegaz this year, who denied that there was a problem. In Uzbekistan, protests by workers against company management are virtually unheard of.
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(News report from Issue No. 327, published on May 5 2017)
APRIL 25 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — The Abershon field in the Azerbaijani section of the Caspian Sea, operated by France’s Total, could start gas production in late 2019 or early 2020, an official at Azerbaijan’s state energy company Socar said. Aberson is considered to be a potentially major gas producer for Azerbaijan which is heavily reliant on the energy sector for revenue. The field was discovered in 2011.
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(News report from Issue No. 326, published on April 28 2017)
APRIL 18 2017 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state oil fund Sofaz is worth £33.2b, officials said, a slight increase from $33.147 at the beginning of the year. This figure is important because Azerbaijan has been borrowing cash from Sofaz to top up its state budget which has shrunk with falling oil prices.
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(News report from Issue No. 325, published on April 17 2017)
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)
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)
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
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)