News Roundup - August 21, 2007

Bloomberg: Kazakhstan May Halt Work on Eni's Kashagan Oil Field
Kazakhstan may suspend work at Eni SpA's Kashagan oil project because of ecological damage as the Caspian Sea state seeks more profit from its biggest oilfield...
BBC News: China's Increasing Hold over Kazakh Oil
Kazakhstan is about to become one of the world's top oil producers, and as the scramble for its resources intensifies, the country's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, says the game is fair, and that Russia, China and the West are all welcome to invest...
St. Petersburg Times: China, Kazakhstan to Link Pipe to Caspian
China and Kazakhstan agreed Saturday to expand an oil pipeline that will link China to the Caspian Sea, giving Beijing direct access to an energy-rich region controlled by Kazakhstan...
Energy Business Review: Toshiba to Participate in Kazakh Uranium Project
As part of the company's plans to enhance its nuclear energy business, Japan's Toshiba Corporation has announced that it will participate in the Kharassan uranium mines project, a new development project in southern Kazakhstan promoted by the republic's state-owned nuclear enterprise Kazatomprom...
Wall Street Journal: Toshiba Agrees To Acquire Stake In Uranium Mine
Toshiba Corp. said it agreed to buy some of Marubeni Corp.'s stake in a Kazakhstan uranium mine. The deal makes Toshiba the latest in a growing group of Japanese companies that has inked deals to procure uranium from Kazakhstan...
Kommersant: Russian Transit Monopoly in Central Asia Broken
The Russian monopoly on the transit of energy resources in Central Asia took two major hits last week. On Thursday, the US State Department announced that it awarding a $1.7-million grant to prepare a feasibility study of the Transcaspian Pipeline from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan and of a oil pipeline across the bottom of the Caspian Sea to connect Kazakhstan to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline...
Stratfor: The Looming Central Asian Battleground
After 16 years of relative quiescence, Central Asia is about to become a major field of competition between the Russians and the Chinese...
World Politics Review: U.S.-Azerbaijan Cooperating on Possible Expansion of Trans-Caspian Pipeline
In its latest effort to wean itself from dependence on the Middle East for its energy needs and to counter rival Russia's influence in resource-rich Central Asia, the United States has signed an agreement with Azerbaijan to examine the feasibility of expanding the so-called Trans-Caspian Pipeline project to transport oil and gas from the region...
Reuters: Indicators - Kazakhstan - August 21, 2007
Kazakhstan's economic indicators based on data provided by the State Statistics Agency, government institutions, the central bank and exchanges...