An unexpected gradualism prevailed in some Kazakh politicians’ words recently, especially over the country’s formerly ambitious oil export targets. ‘We don’t have to rush at any price’ seemed to be the word of the day - maybe also in the light of Azerbaijan’s increasing woes with oil windfalls that are becoming more and more difficult to digest.

But now we are back with some heavy number crunching and ambitious development targets. This time it’s Vice Prime-Minister for the Economy and Budgetary Planning Aslan Musin (former akim of Atyrau) who is showing the way forward. There are so many goals for the year 2015 that we should switch to bullet points:

• Kazakhstan GDP should stand at USD 300 billion in 2015, thus growth rates should be no less than 15 percent p.a.
• investments during the next eight years should amount USD 127 billion
• Before 2015, Kazakhstan should enter the top 10 world oil and gas producers, requiring a doubling of current levels
• Manufacturing as a share of GDP should reach 40%
• By 2015, the share of science-intensive industries as a proportion of GDP should rise by factor six
• The national banking system should transform Kazakhstan into a financial center of the whole Central Asian region
• Kazakhstan should enter the top 5 world grain exporters

There is a little more of that in the short article, but I thought the above is already enough to give an impression of what you should expect to see in Kazakhstan by the (not-so-distant) year 2015. There are some question marks, surprise surprise. (more…)

As reported on this blog before, Kazakhstan is turning green on its oil industry and has already threatened TCO with hefty fines should the company not comply with environmental regulations at Tengiz.

The move is apparently part of a wider strategy not to boost oil production at any price, reports the Gulf Times:

The Kazakh government, which had planned to lift annual output to at least 150mn tonnes (3mn bpd) by 2015, now wants to raise standards of environmental protection.

(…)

“It won’t be a tragedy if in 2015 we extract” less than the target, Ural Mukhamedzhanov, the chairman of the Kazakh lower chamber of parliament, said late on Monday in an interview in London. “I would even curb some projects for the sake of the ecological balance.”

The fact that ex-Soviet countries care about the environment is always slightly suspicious. Although Kazakhstan has a rather long tradition of green movements (e.g. the protests against nuclear testing near Semipalatinsk in the 1980s), there are several other ramifications of this new green conscience: (more…)