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Kazakhstan: The Parliament Ratified the Treaty on Oil Transportation Routes Detouring Russia |
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Friday, 25 April 2008
Plenary meeting of the upper house of the parliament of Kazakhstan this Thursday adopted the law "On ratification of the Treaty between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Republic of Azerbaijan on support and assistance of oil export from the Republic of Kazakhstan via the Caspian Sea and the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan to international markets by means of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan system."
The treaty in question stands for a new system of Kazakh oil transportation across the Caspian Sea and into the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan system. Wholly new infrastructure is to be built, including expansion of terminals in Kazakh ports and construction of a pipeline across the Caspian bedrock. Oil export along this route detouring Russia may average 25-30 million tons a year. Export via Russia in the meantime does not exceed 20 million tons.
The government of Russia insists on synchronization of expansion of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium and construction of the Trans-Balkans Pipeline from Burgas to Alexandrupolis. Averaging about 32 million tons a year nowadays, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium will therefore be able to up its running capacity to 67 million tons only in 2014 at best. Hence Astana's decision to export oil from Kashagan and Tengiz (where production is expected to reach 40 million tons this year and 120 million tons in several years) to Turkey. That Russia is going to benefit absolutely nothing from it goes without saying.
Some specialists suspect that Astana was persuaded to join the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan system by Chevron, an American company that is part of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. Chevron officials warned Moscow the other day that Kazakh oil might end up exported to the world markets via Azerbaijan and Georgia unless Russia stopped inventing excuses to forestall expansion of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium.
"We are ever prepared to discuss mutually beneficial options, but blackmail is not what we will ever find interesting," Industry and Energy Deputy Minister Andrei Dementiev said.
It seems, however, that the Kazakh authorities have joined the "blackmailers" now. It was only recently (last May, in act) that President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev was of a different frame of mind. "Kazakhstan is convinced that most oil, or all oil, should be exported through the territory of Russia. We've always believed so," he was quoted as saying.
25.04.2008
Ferghana.ru |
Friday, 25 April 2008
Kazakhstan
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Central Asia |
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