07-11-05
Kazakhstan plans to become one of the world's
top ten hydrocarbon exporters by 2012, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev
said.
"By 2012 Kazakhstan should be one of the top ten exporters of oil and gas in the
world," Nazarbayev said at the 21st, extraordinary, congress of the Federation
of Kazak Trade Unions in Astana. He said that by that time "the overall volume
of industrial production in the republic should more than double."
The president also said that the share of industrial production "in the
structure of GDP would increase 40 % by the start of the next decade, compared
with 2005." Nazarbayev said that a target has been set of becoming one of the 50
most developed countries in the world over the coming years.
"The oil and gas sector and the entire extraction industry will become the main
donor for achieving this task," he said.
In May 2003 Kazakhstan passed a state program for the development of the
Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea in the period to 2015. This state program will
be implemented in three stages and by 2015 the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea
alone will annually produce 100 mm tons of oil and up to 63 bn cm of gas.
At the moment Kazakhstan produces oil onshore only.
Oil production in the republic last year exceeded 59 mm tons, including gas
condensate.
Domestic consumption is currently estimated at 10 mm to 12 mm tons of oil and
condensate, and the rest is exported.
Source: Asia Pulse