The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq has announced a plan to construct an oil pipeline to Turkey with a volume of 1 million barrels per day (bpd), move hinting at tectonic shifts in the geo-economics and associated geopolitics … Continue reading →
The president of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Rovnag Abdullaev, has announced that the US$8 billion-plus Trans-Anatolian Gas Pipeline may be expanded four-fold from its initially planned volume of 8-16 billion cubic meters per year (bcm/y) to as … Continue reading →
The French energy major Total this weekend announced yet another major natural gas discovery in the Caspian Sea offshore from Azerbaijan. The Absheron block is located to the east of the better-known Shah Deniz field (in which Total has a … Continue reading →
India Uzbekistan relations reached a new level and further the former’s economic and strategic penetration in Central Asia with the visit to New Delhi last week of Uzbekistan’s President Islom Karimov, who signed an agreement that could lead to India’s … Continue reading →
The changing geo-economic environment around the Central Asian and South Caucasus hydrocarbon energy producers is reflected in a public flip-flop by a major European Union official this week. At a news conference in Berlin, European Union Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, … Continue reading →
Recent progress towards agreement on the possibilities for constructing a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP), in the context of the European Union’s Southern Corridor Program, has drawn attention away from moves towards the elaboration of smaller-scale projects for the trans-Caspian transit … Continue reading →
Three recent developments testify to the latent dynamism of the Kazakhstan energy growth. These concern an extension of industrial cooperation with Ukraine and with India, and new plans for increasing the capacity of the pipeline of the Caspian Pipeline Corporation … Continue reading →
Ukraine looks likely soon to join the growing list of Azerbaijan energy export partners, as Baku continues to add to its findings of offshore natural gas. Ukraine is preparing to build its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal to reduce … Continue reading →
Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbaev has just completed a two-day official visit to enhance Kazakhstan-European Union relations. He went to Belgium, the present chairman-in-office of the European Union Council, and France. Kazakhstan is itself president-in-office of the Organization for Security and … Continue reading →
In mid-August, BP Azerbaijan announced that oil from Turkmenistan is now entering the BTC in Azerbaijan and will constitute between four and five percent of its present throughput of 800,000 barrels per day (bpd), which is being upgraded to 1.2 million bpd with a view towards eventual inclusion of oil from Kazakhstan’s offshore Tengiz field. These practical steps of cooperation with Azerbaijan, combined with the mid-August announcement in Ashgabad of new directions in Turkmenistan’s gas export policy, point the way towards a European direction for future Turkmenistani production, not forgetting China and the possibility of South Asia, while Iran is given only marginal reference and Russia is ignored.
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