The French energy major Total this weekend announced yet another major natural gas discovery in the Caspian Sea offshore from Azerbaijan. The Absheron block is located to the east of the better-known Shah Deniz field (in which Total has a … Continue reading →
South Korea President Lee Myung-bak returned home last week from a tour of Mongolia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan that helped to project South Korea investment and its foreign economic diplomacy across Inner and Central Asia while significantly expanding Seoul’s ties with … Continue reading →
India Uzbekistan relations reached a new level and further the former’s economic and strategic penetration in Central Asia with the visit to New Delhi last week of Uzbekistan’s President Islom Karimov, who signed an agreement that could lead to India’s … Continue reading →
The trip this past week of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should be seen in light of the possible emergence of an India Kazakhstan China geo-economic triangle, similar in nature to the one I pointed out seven years ago, long before … Continue reading →
The changing geo-economic environment around the Central Asian and South Caucasus hydrocarbon energy producers is reflected in a public flip-flop by a major European Union official this week. At a news conference in Berlin, European Union Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, … Continue reading →
Recent progress towards agreement on the possibilities for constructing a Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline (TCGP), in the context of the European Union’s Southern Corridor Program, has drawn attention away from moves towards the elaboration of smaller-scale projects for the trans-Caspian transit … Continue reading →
Kazakhstan has three major regions. Large parts of the west are desert or swamp; the population density generally very low, and the development of energy resources has encouraged local elites to explore the margins of their autonomy vis-à-vis the political … Continue reading →
Incident The EU’s president Jose Manuel Barroso, visiting Baku with energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger, has signed an agreement with Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliev foreseeing the sale of “substantial volumes of gas over the long term.” But they did not publish … Continue reading →
Three recent developments testify to the latent dynamism of the Kazakhstan energy growth. These concern an extension of industrial cooperation with Ukraine and with India, and new plans for increasing the capacity of the pipeline of the Caspian Pipeline Corporation … Continue reading →
The visit by Turkey’s foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Beijing a week ago, follows by a scant three weeks the visit by China’s prime minister Wen Jiabao’s to Ankara on October 7-8 as part of the latter’s European diplomatic tour … Continue reading →