TCO: “Final decision on financing FGP not adopted yet”

By Zulfiya Bainekeeva

TCO’s general manager on government and public relations Rzabek Artygaliev TCO’s general manager on government and public relations Rzabek Artygaliev officially disproved the information that was available to the editorial office about the suspension of Future Growth Project (FGP) construction activities and the forthcoming reductions of workforce at “Tengizchevroil” LLP.

The situation that appeared after the drop of oil price of oil, introduced amendments to the projects of major oil-extracting companies. TCO held quite a long pause, but also didn't withstand - during the recent visit of Kazakhstan ministers to Atyrau the information about optimization of FGP has been voiced.

And, apparently, the decision was a delayed one - in any case, quite recently the project was still hiring new people, discussed terms of employment and even appointed the dates of their report to work, but literally, in the last minute, those who were supposed to start work in March, were told to wait.

According to our information, at the beginning of February the project employees were told that the project will be suspended – to be more precise, the design and engineering activities will be continued, but at a reduced speed, and construction activities could be completely stopped for indefinite time, perhaps, for 4 or even more years. As the result, we are talking about the redundancy of nearly 3 000 employees of contracting construction companies at Tengiz.

The officials of TCO disprove these details:

- Nobody said that the project will be stopped: the design engineering, preparatory works for construction activities of the field camp, roads are ongoing, - said Rzabek Artygaliyev in our telephone conversation. Optimization of all expenses is ongoing due to falling of oil prices, there is no final decision on financing yet.

- When will the final decision on project financing be made?

- We expect that this will be resolved by the end of this year. Redundancies? I have not heard anything about it. It is unlikely that there will be new hires, but I have not heard anything about redundacies.

To recall, initially it was planned to construct a new oil stabilization plant within FGP framework and the delivery of raw materials to that plant was supposed to be provided by the   ring trunk line of the new gathering system. All associated gas will be pumped back into reservoir with the help of several sour gas injection compressors. Besides, the central unit for pressure boosting should be built that will allow well-head controlling facilities to ensure the required level of volumes and pressure of crude oil. With FGP start-up the oil production volume at Tengiz is believed to increase by 12 million tons per year – up to 38 million.