Category:

New War Risk on Russia Fringes Amid Armenia-Azeri Clashes

The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan plan to meet this week in a bid to defuse escalating tensions between the two countries after at least 18 soldiers were killed in the worst clashes in two decades. The fighting in the past week in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh has been the deadliest since the two former Soviet states signed a cease-fire in 1994. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan will hold talks with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in the Russian city of Sochi on Aug. 8-9, Armenian Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamyan said on the government’s website. “We hope that serious arrangements will be reached during the meeting,” Abrahamyan said. “We are not afraid of war, I just think it is not clever to solve problems with wars in the 21st century.” The skirmishes between the South Caucasus countries, which border Turkey and Iran , flared amid the worst geopolitical standoff […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Gazprom looks to future in Kazakhstan

Russian natural gas company Gazprom said it was considering extending its working relationship with its counterparts in Kazakhstan through the 2030s. Deputy Gazprom Chairman Alexander Medvedev met in Astana with Kazakh Oil Minister Uzakbai Karabalin to review the Russian company’s future in the former Soviet republic. "The parties discussed further cooperation in the gas sector and, in particular, the extension of the long-term agreement till 2038 — on purchase and sale of gas produced from the Karachaganak gas and condensate field," Gazprom said in a statement Wednesday. "A focus was also placed on the prospects for the joint development of the Imashevskoye gas and condensate field." Kazakhstan is a net importer of natural gas. Much of its domestic gas is used to enhance production from its vast oil fields. It has 85 trillion cubic feet of proven natural gas reserves and Karachaganak and Imashevskoye combine to represent 53 percent […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Europe leans on Azerbaijan for gas security

Building a gas corridor from Azerbaijan is just as as it is Azeri economic development, a top European leader said in Baku. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso spoke before an audience at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy University, saying the country has undergone "radical and rapid change" since it gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. European leaders have said the huge volumes of natural gas off the coast of the former Soviet republic could help break Russia’s grip on the European energy sector. The so-called Southern Corridor envisions a series of pipelines from Caspian reserves to the European market. "This is a project that can encourage greater economic cooperation, improve energy security and create over 30,000 jobs in all countries along the corridor," Barroso said Saturday. British energy company BP is leading efforts to draw natural gas from the Shah Deniz gas field off the coast of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Production at Kazakhstan’s Kashagan Oil Field Halted Until 2016

The full moon rises in the background over an oil rig at the Kashagan offshore oil field in the Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan. Reuters Kazakhstan’s giant Kashagan oil field, one of the world’s largest industrial projects, won’t produce any oil until at least 2016 while workers battle against the hostile Caspian Sea to complete massive repairs, according to people familiar with the matter. The project’s partners, which include Eni SpA, Total SA, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp. , have concluded they must entirely replace two 55-mile pipelines before they can restart production, the people said. Replacing the two pipelines connecting an offshore artificial island to onshore facilities is estimated to cost "a few billion dollars," they said. The latest delay is a blow to the Kazakh government, which had based its economic forecasts on revenue from the Caspian Sea oil field, where output was expected […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Production at Kazakhstan's Kashagan Oil Field Halted Until 2016

The full moon rises in the background over an oil rig at the Kashagan offshore oil field in the Caspian Sea in western Kazakhstan. Reuters Kazakhstan’s giant Kashagan oil field, one of the world’s largest industrial projects, won’t produce any oil until at least 2016 while workers battle against the hostile Caspian Sea to complete massive repairs, according to people familiar with the matter. The project’s partners, which include Eni SpA, Total SA, Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp. , have concluded they must entirely replace two 55-mile pipelines before they can restart production, the people said. Replacing the two pipelines connecting an offshore artificial island to onshore facilities is estimated to cost "a few billion dollars," they said. The latest delay is a blow to the Kazakh government, which had based its economic forecasts on revenue from the Caspian Sea oil field, where output was expected […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Kazakh Kashagan oil field to change management model, keep current operator

Kazakhstan’s troubled giant offshore Kashagan field is set to see a revamp of the management model in the next several months, but will not change conditions of the field’s production sharing agreement (PSA) and its shareholding structure, the Kashagan operator NCOC said in a statement Monday. Earlier this month, Kazakhstan’s oil and gas minister Uzakbay Karabalin told local media that the ministry was dissatisfied with Kashagan’s rising costs and slow decision-making processes and expected the project’s management system to become more efficient after the planned revamp. "No changes to the PSA and/or the NCSPSA [the North Caspian Sea Production Sharing Agreement] ownership structure are envisioned as a result of the planned transition," NCOC said in a statement. An NCOC spokesman denied last week’s report by the Nefte Compass publication that US major ExxonMobil is to take over as Kashagan’s effective operator from Italy’s Eni. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Report: Exxon May Take Over as Kashagan Operator

U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil is in line to take over as operator of the giant Kashagan field in an attempt to fix the beleaguered $50 billion project offshore Kazakhstan, industry publication Nefte Compass reported on Friday. Discussions are continuing but Exxon could be appointed as soon as at the end of June, the newsletter quoted a senior Kazakh official as saying. Exxon was not immediately available for comments. Italy’s Eni was given the job of operating the project in 2001. It later lost its role as the sole lead operator following major delays and cost overruns. Production finally started last September but was halted in early October after the discovery of gas leaks in the pipeline network. Oil output may now not restart until early 2016, Kazakh Oil and Gas Minister Uzakbai Karabalin said in May, urging foreign partners to start replacing leaky […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Hungary’s MOL finds oil, gas onshore Kazakhstan

Hungarian energy company MOL said it discovered oil and natural gas while drilling into the Rozhkovskoye field onshore Kazakhstan. MOL said it posted a test flow rate of 1.9 million barrels of oil equivalent and 6 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from the field’s Federovsky block. MOL has a 27.5 percent stake in a consortium controlled by the country’s state-owned KazMunaiGas. The Hungarian company said qualitative analysis was underway to get a better understanding of the full reserve potential in the Federovsky block. The company offered no reserve estimate for the entire Rozhkovskoye field in its Monday announcement. Kazakhstan has the second largest oil reserves and is the second largest oil producer among former Soviet republics. Onshore fields like Rozhkovskoye account for roughly half of the country’s proven oil reserves, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports . © 2014 United Press […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Hungary's MOL finds oil, gas onshore Kazakhstan

Hungarian energy company MOL said it discovered oil and natural gas while drilling into the Rozhkovskoye field onshore Kazakhstan. MOL said it posted a test flow rate of 1.9 million barrels of oil equivalent and 6 million cubic feet of natural gas per day from the field’s Federovsky block. MOL has a 27.5 percent stake in a consortium controlled by the country’s state-owned KazMunaiGas. The Hungarian company said qualitative analysis was underway to get a better understanding of the full reserve potential in the Federovsky block. The company offered no reserve estimate for the entire Rozhkovskoye field in its Monday announcement. Kazakhstan has the second largest oil reserves and is the second largest oil producer among former Soviet republics. Onshore fields like Rozhkovskoye account for roughly half of the country’s proven oil reserves, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports . © 2014 United Press […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Further blow for $50bn Kashagan oil project

The $50bn Kashagan oil project in Kazakhstan is likely to be delayed by two more years while 200km of pipeline is replaced, in a further blow for the companies developing the largest oilfield outside the Middle East. Erbolat Dossayev, Kazakhstan’s minister for economy and budget planning, told the FT that he expected production to start at the end of next year at the earliest – but that it could be delayed until 2016. It is the first public admission by the government that the project will not only fail to produce oil this year but may not resume production until 2016. “It will be two years,” added one industry official. It is a blow for the consortium of companies – including ExxonMobil , Royal Dutch Shell , Total , and CNPC – which have invested some $50bn in the project so far in the hope that it would one […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple