Negotiations on the development of the Khvalynskoye and Imashevskoye fields are being resumed

The meeting of the Minister of Energy of Kazakhstan Magzum Mirzagaliyev and the Chairman of the Management Board of Gazprom Alexey Miller took place in St. Petersburg. The parties reviewed the main areas of cooperation in the gas sector, including in the field of gas processing and agreed to resume negotiations on the development of the Khvalynskoye and Imashevskoye fields.

It should be recalled that back in April 2003, an agreement was signed between KazMunayGas and Lukoil on the principles of joint development of the Khvalynskoye field in the Caspian Sea. A joint venture was established in 2005 to develop it. In 2013, an intergovernmental agreement was signed on the development of the Imashevsky field site in the border zone between the Atyrau region of Kazakhstan and the Astrakhan region of Russia.

Already at the plenary session of the XVII Forum of interregional cooperation between Russia and Kazakhstan, held in September this year, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called on his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to agree as soon as possible on the development of the Imashevsky and Khvalynskoye gas fields.

As Magzum Mirzagaliyev noted during the meeting in St. Petersburg, Kazakhstan and Russia today have embarked on the active development of oil and gas fields with a focus on gas processing. “To do this, we have developed a number of fiscal and regulatory preferences that stimulate the exploration and production of hydrocarbons. Gas consumption in the country has increased dramatically in recent years, and will grow steadily taking into account the transition from coal to gas, as well as the development of gas chemistry,” the minister said.

Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller said that the company is interested in the projects and is ready to return to discussing the terms of participation in them.