News Roundup - September 4, 2007

The Moscow Times: Gazprom To Wait for Kazakh Gas
Gazprom will not gain access to gas from the huge Karachaganak field in Kazakhstan before 2012, the company said Monday, disclosing the time frame for the first time...
The Financial Times: A Caspian Halt Shows Oil Giants Face Fresh Political Perils
When a delegation of executives from five of the world's biggest oil companies led by Italy's Eniwent to Kazakhstan last week to seek to resolve a dispute at the giant Kashagan oilfield, they were met with news that the government had halted work on the development on environmental grounds and had launched a criminal inquiry into alleged tax evasion on equipment imports...
Kommersant: Turkmenistan Grants China Gas License
Turkmenistan has begun to develop its first new natural gas deposit since Soviet times, including new transport infrastructure. The Chinese national oil company CNPC has received a license for exploration and production in Amu Darya Region, where 17 billion cu. m. of gas will be produced...
The Financial Times: Kazakhmys Investors Benefit As Profits Rise
Kazakhmys on Tuesday said it would return $700m to shareholders as higher metals prices and stable production boosted interim pre-tax profits by 24 per cent to $1.19bn despite cost pressures...
Sofia Echo: Pipeline Talks Between Bulgaria, Russia and Greece Still On
The entities that will form part of the International Project Company (IPC), the consortium set to build the trans-Balkan oil pipeline from the Bulgarian port of Bourgas to the Greek port of Alexandroupolis, held marathon negotiations to agree on the procedure for IPC incorporation and the location of the companies’ headquarters on August 27 and 28...
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty: Kazakh President Addresses New One-Party Parliament
Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev today addressed the first joint session of the newly elected parliament in Astana...
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty: Kazakh Court Releases Banker, Jails Arresting Officials
An Almaty court today ordered NurBank official Abilmazhin Gilimov to be released from jail, and ruled instead to imprison the officials who ordered Gilimov's arrest, RFE/RL's Kazakh Service reported...
EurasiaNet Insight: Mining Sector Strives to Improve Safety, Reduce Fatalities
At the entrance to a shabby mining town in Kazakhstan’s industrial heartland, a sign on a typical Soviet-era apartment building offers a proud boast: "Beloved Town Shakhtinsk." The abundance of abandoned buildings with gaping windows would suggest otherwise – testifying to the exodus from the town in the 1990s, amid the troubles plaguing the country’s mining sector...
Interfax: Imperial Energy to Drill First Exploratory Well at Kazakh Oil Block in September
Britain's Imperial Energy is planningto start drilling the first exploratory well at the North Torgai oilblock in Kazakhstan in September, Yekaterina Kirsanova, head of thecompany's Moscow office, told journalists...
Oil and Gas Eurasia: Kazakhstan Wants Kashagan Payment, Restructure
The government of Kazakhstan expects compensation for what it sees as "tens of billions of dollars" of economic harm due to massive cost overruns and delays at the Kashagan oil project, led by Italy's Eni SpA (E), a government official said Friday...
Reuters: Indicators - Kazakhstan - September 4, 2007
Kazakhstan's economic indicators based on data provided by the State Statistics Agency, government institutions, the central bank and exchanges...