OREANDA-NEWS. On January 14, 2007 representatives of Shell, Total, Eni, Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips and Inpex arrived in Akorda for the meeting, reported the Official website www.akorda.kz.

At the meeting, Minister for Energy and Mineral Resources Sauat Mynbayev informed the President on the outcomes of the talks conducted according to the President’s order by the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan with the companies’ consortium that signed Production Sharing Agreement on the Northern Caspian Project.

“Most important is that the consortium’s members including the Kazakhstani side are confident that the project will have a positive trend in future,” the Minister said.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev pointed out that the Kazakhsani side had been committed to the signed production sharing agreements. However, because of the repeating shift of extraction start deadlines, the republican budget has missed significant funds.

“Now, a fair decision has been made. I think the Kazakhstani side must be satisfied with this decision. Kazakhstani Government and personally I respect all the companies you are representing. And this is good that after achieving the consensus we remain friends and partners and will continue to work together,” the President underscored.

The meeting’s participants expressed their satisfaction with the outcomes of the negotiations and conversation with the President.

“This meeting was very favorable to the agreements achieved during the talks. Today is a very important day, the starting point of mutual understanding between all sides. I would like to say that Kashagan is a fairly large project, and companies participating in it successfully implement the project,” Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer said at a press briefing.

 Nursultan Nazarbayev made a special statement on this issue.

“Kashagan is one of the largest oil fields and gas reservoirs in the world. In order to exploit it, Kazakhstan inked a production sharing agreement with the largest transnational corporations. However, because these companies could not meet the outlined deadlines of production start, Kazakhstan was loosing its share of profit.

Due to that, last summer I instructed the Government to hold negotiations in order to protect Kazakhstan’s interests in this project. We had very complicated talks that drew attention of international media and world community. After long and difficult negotiations, the Kazakhstani side has protected its interests. The KazMunayGas Company doubles its share in the project, and this will increase our profits in the future.

I believe this is good news to our country. KazMunayGas is becoming a large company even in international scale and will be able to attract more investments. This was very important.

Today’s meeting demonstrates that we all are satisfied with the results. We have prevented the contract’s breach that was possible in the case if we did not agree. Both companies-investors and the Kazakhstani side are pleased with the results of the talks,” Nursultan Nazarbayev emphasized.