Page 11 - FSUOGM Week 27 2019

FSUOGM PIPELINES & TRANSPORT FSUOGM
Saryarka reaches half-way point
KAZAKHSTAN
The pipeline will bring gas to Kazakhstan’s capital.
KAZAKHSTAN is half way to completing a pipeline that will provide its capital Nursultan with gas supplies.
Nursultan, formerly known as Astana, has no access to piped gas, relying instead on coal- based power generation and Russian LNG for its energy needs. is will change with the launch of the Saryarka pipeline, which will supply the city with up to 2.6bn cubic metres per year of gas produced at elds in western Kazakhstan.
Local news channels reported on July 5 that 531km of the 1,061-km pipeline running from Kyzylorda in the south through Zhezkazgan, Karaganda and Temirtau before terminating in Nursultan had been welded into place. One engi- neer at AstanaGas, the subsidiary of national oil and gas company KazMunayGas (KMG) tasked with overseeing the project, said the pipeline was being welded a rate of 7-8km per day. e weld- ing systems being used were provided by US pipe construction rm CRC-Evans, he said.
Saryarka is slated to start up by the end of this year, providing gas supply to 171 settlements along its route.
“ e result of this work will be the unin- terrupted supply of natural gas to more than two million Kazakhs, the conversion of heating
facilities from coal to gas, the improvement of the environment of the regions that the pipe- line will pass through: the air basin of Kazakh- stan’s capital,” Daniyar Berlibayev, KMG’s deputy chairman, was quoted as saying by local media.
Kazakh authorities had aimed to build Sar- yarka several years earlier, but postponed the project a er the 2014 oil price crash. While a groundbreaking ceremony was held late last year, construction did not begin in earnest until March. e Eurasian Development Bank (EDB) and the Development Bank of Kazakh- stan (DBK) agreed in June to buy KZT102bn ($266mn) in bonds to help finance the pro- ject’s rst phase, which will cost KZT267.3bn ($698mn) in total. Kazakhstan’s Uni ed Accu- mulation Pension Fund and local development bank Baiterek National are also providing support.
Kazakhstan plans to extend the pipeline at a later stage to Kokshetau and then Petropavlovsk, near the border with Russia, as well as install new compressor stations to raise its capacity to 6 bcm per year. Power and heating stations in Nursul- tan will also be converted to run on gas instead of coal.™
Gazprom strikes 5-year gas deal with Turkmengaz
RUSSIA
Gazprom will buy 5.5bcm of Turkmen gas per year.
RUSSIA’S Gazprom has announced entering into a new ve-year contract for the annual pur- chase of 5.5bn per year of Turkmen gas.
The state gas company resumed imports from its Turkmen counterpart Turkmengaz on April 15 following a three-year suspension, and bought 1.2bn of gas by June 30. e new con- tract came into force on July 1, Gazprom said in a statement, without specifying a price for the gas.
The volume of shipments is still a far cry from deliveries under the pair’s previous sup- ply agreement, which peaked at 40bcm in 2008. Turkmenistan’s only other major gas customer is China, which took 33.3bcm of supplies last year.
e loss of trade with Russia in early 2016 and then Iran the following year came as a blow to the Turkmen economy, which had already been shaken by low commodity prices, a recession in Russia and a slowdown in China.
A er reaching record levels, Turkmen gas supplies to Russia were brought to a halt in April 2009 following a mysterious pipeline explosion. e Ashgabat government blamed Gazprom for
the incident, claiming the company had failed to warn that it was reducing gas imports, resulting in a buildup of pipeline pressure that caused the blast.
Gazprom, nding it no longer needed Turk- men gas to meet demand in Europe following the 2008 financial crisis, continued reducing imports, with supplies dwindling to just 4bcm in 2015.
Turkmenistan’s economic crisis is continuing to unfold, with independent reports of soaring levels of in ation and unemployment, as well as the introduction of rationing of basic goods. Faced with budget restraints, the government last year ended its quarter-century-long practice of providing citizens with free supplies of natural gas, electricity and water.
Authorities are banking the country’s future prosperity on the Turkmenistan-Afghani- stan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline project, designed to carve out a new market for Turkmen gas in Asia. But construction has stalled amid di culties over funding the $9bn venture.™
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