The Ministry of Finance of Kazakhstan has declared that the government will review its newly introduced export fee for oil exports to cancel all prerogatives.

Earlier it was said that the tax will not be imposed on the “companies having stable contracts” meaning virtually all foreign investors’ projects based on PSAs. The exclusion was accepted with a big deal of skepticism among local analysts, who said that the duty would undermine competitive positions of the domestic extracting companies.

The lift of preferences is definitely a logical step and should have been introduced from the very beginning — the government, most likely, was not sure about the reaction of foreign investors and was afraid of their runaway, but apparently the authorities realized that this is not going to happen anyways.

At the same time, Kazakhstan continues to  seek new routes to Europe for its oil and gas exports. This was stated by Deputy Energy Minister Lyazzat Kiinov at a recent conference in Kiev, Ukraine:

“Kazakhstan has a huge export capacity and we are studying all possible ways to increase shipments. At the moment, one of the major tasks is stable supplies of crude to our oil refinery in Romania and oil-based products from the refinery to the rest of Europe“, he said.

As we already reported, State-run KazMunaiGaz National Co. bought 75% of Romania’s Rompetrol Group NV in August with refineries and gasoline stations across EU after acquiring processing facilities at a Georgian port on the Black Sea the previous year.