Page 8 - FSUOGM Week 01 2021

FSUOGM COMMENTARY FSUOGM

Price caps restored of oil workers who were calling for better pay and
The oil-rich country’s government announced working conditions.
late on January 4 that it was restoring some price Tokayev is the handpicked successor of Nur-
caps on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Many sultan Nazarbayev, a Soviet-era Communist boss
Kazakhs have converted their cars to run on who went on to become Kazakhstan’s first leader
LPG, which is much less costly than gasoline after independence and ruled for nearly three
as a vehicle fuel in the country because of the decades until he stepped down in 2019. The
price caps. When lifting the caps on January 1, 81-year-old is said to still command enormous
the government argued that the low price was power behind the scenes. Under Nazarbayev, a
unsustainable. small elite amassed enormous wealth. Though
The first rallies in the chain of protests report- the country has immense oil-generated riches,
edly took place on January 2 in the western oil the many Kazakhs who struggle to make ends
town of Zhanaozen, with a sudden spike in the meet typically assert that they have not been dis-
price of car fuel causing fury. Gatherings then tributed equitably.
quickly sprung up in nearby villages in sur- The nominal average salary in Kazakhstan is
rounding Mangystau region and then in other around 250,000 tenge ($575).
locations in the west, in cities like Aktau, Atyrau Manshuk Ergaliyeva, the director of a house-
and Aktobe, according to local reports. By Jan- hold goods store in downtown Almaty, recently
uary 4, people had come out onto the streets in told Eurasianet in an interview: “We could have
numbers in locations many hundreds of kilo- lived as well as the people of Dubai thanks to oil
metres away, in the southern towns of Taraz, revenues, if only they hadn’t been plundered.”
Shymkent and Kyzyl-Orda, in the north, in the Kazakhstan’s political system is fully con-
cities of Uralsk and Kostanai, as well as in Almaty trolled by the government. Only the ruling party,
and Nur-Sultan, the capital, among other places, Nur Otan (Radiant Fatherland) and a handful of
Eurasianet also wrote. loyal puppet parties are officially registered.
Big public protests are rare in Kazakhstan. As part of his efforts to ease social tensions,
Street protests are illegal unless their organisers Tokayev formed a consensus-building forum
file an advance notice. called the National Council of Public Confi-
In Zhanaozen, dozens of people were killed in dence. However, the initiative has been roundly
protests in 2011 that took place after the sacking dismissed as window-dressing. ™

PIPELINES & TRANSPORT

Gazprom completes Far East

pipe expansion

RUSSIA RUSSIA’S Gazprom announced in late Decem- Russia’s Far East region, but the expansion pro-
ber that it had completed an expansion project at ject will double this to 20 bcm per year. Some
a key gas pipeline in the Russian Far East. of this gas could also be sent to China provided
The state gas company reported on further upgrades to infrastructure in both coun-
December 21 that it had finished expand- tries are made. It could also supply a small-scale
ing the capacity of a 391-km section of the LNG plant that Gazprom has proposed building
Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok (SKV) in Vladivostok.
pipeline between Komsomolsk-on-Amur to The SKV pipeline is expected to be under-
Khabarovsk. The pipeline is currently being pinned by additional gas supply developments
filled with gas. off the east coast of Sakhalin, including the
The SKV pipeline can currently transport up Kirinskoye and South-Kirinskoye gas fields.
to 10bn cubic metres per year of gas produced off Moving the latter project forward will be diffi-
the coast of Sakhalin Island to demand centres in cult, as it is subject to US sanctions. ™

P8 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 01 05•January•2022