​“Center cut” Tengiz and our friends in Hague

By Laura Suleimenova

The 9th Atyrau regional oil and gas technological conference - OILTECH Atyrau 2015- started its work on April 14.

SOMETHING ABOUT "CHAMELEONS"

The Chairman of the Union of Service Companies of Kazakhstan Almaz Kudaibergen reminded that today domestic companies seek to participate in major oil projects with good reason.

– We are waiting when pipelines will be laid at Kashagan and the second phase of the project starts. The Future Growth Project (FGP) is commencing and Kazakhstan companies can perform main part of construction work there.

He placed an emphasis on the definition of "Kazakhstan company":

– In the 2000s they considered those that were registered in Kazakhstan, later the companies where 95% of salary fund fall for Kazakhstan were called domestic. But we are moving forward, and in Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) on Kashagan it is stated that domestic company is considered the one where 50% and more shares of participation belong to Kazakhstan citizens or state. We support this. We know the cases when companies position themselves as domestic because of 95% of salary compesations, but in fact, their expat employees get paid in other countries and that is not reflected in their books.

The Chairman of “Shell" concern in Kazakhstan Duncan van Bergen told about a joint project "Road map of scientific and technological development of extracting sector of oil and gas industry of Kazakhstan" that they execute with KazMunayGas Oil Company.

Within its framework Shell fully financed the purchasing of equipment, commissioning and training of laboratory assistants for the geochemical laboratory that was opened in Atyrau a few days ago. According to D. van Bergen, the Dutch once more confirmed their commitment to the certain political club called "The Friends of Kazakhstan" that is based in Hague.

ONLY AFTER YOU

The Deputy Director of FGP/WPM projects Aidar Dosbaev informed that "Tengizchevroil" completed front end engineering design and started the detailed design that is now 23% complete.

Dosbaev assured that despite optimization of the budget due to falling of oil prices, TCO will not decrease its commitment on Kazakhstan content. In this respect, the company considers that the most perspective practice is creation of joint ventures. In particular, according to TCO's presentation, for implementation of the project few joint ventures have been established. For front end engineering/detailed engineering, purchases and construction management -"KPJV" has been established (actually there are two companies with such name, see "A Journey beyond the seven seas"); for drilling - joint venture between “Neighbours" and “Teniz Burgylau" companies, for construction of field camp Orken - between "Isker" and "Bonnatti", for production of modules – DShMI/Ersai.

Later in questions and answers session he couldn't or didn't want to tell the correspondent of Ak Zhaik newspaper the information about the percentage of costs for delivery of modules to Tengiz from the total FGP/WPM budget of $38,8 billion.

To recall, because of selected by TCO of the modular method of construction, the equipment elements, produced in the European countries and mainly in Great Britain, will be transported, first, through Europe and Asia to the place of modules assembly (Korea), and from Korea by sea via the Volga-Don channel the modules will be delivered to Prorva.

Dosbaev didn't provide figures of employees that will be made redundant due to slowing down of project activities. But noted that expats will be made redundant in larger scale than locals.

However, on the sidelines of the session the reason of his lack of information in nuances of the project became clear. Dosbaev was appointed to his current position literally a few days ago, he was seconded from KMG.

(to be continued)