KazMunaiGas to bring Kazakh content in procurement to KZT 387 billion

KazMunaiGas National Oil Company is planning to bring Kazakh content in procurement to 387 billion tenge ($2.65 billion), Tengrinews.kz reports citing KazMunaiGas General Manager for Service Projects Dimash Bizhanov as saying at the forum of suppliers of goods and services in oil and gas industry. “Based on the performed works, we have set the following goals: to achieve a 23% increase of 2010 value of oil and gas equipment production at Kazakhstan factories by 2015. This is equivalent to the incrase from 28.5 billion tenge ($195 million) to 35 billion tenge ($240 million). We plan to bring the share of Kazakh content in KazMunaiGas procurement of goods to 50% or 387 billion tenge ($2.65 billion), and the share of Kazakh content in KazMunaiGas procurement of works and services to 90% or 740 billion tenge ($5.07 billion),” Bizhanov said. According to Bizhanov, KazMunaiGas has 14.9 billion tenge ($102 million) worth of contracts with Kazakhstan companies. “As per the procurement projects of our subsidiaries for the period till 2015, we are expecting to conclude long-term contracts for the total amount of about 55 billion tenge ($377 million),” said Dimash Bizhanov. He said that needs of major oil and gas projects operators are being identified. Increase of Kazakh content in these projects may be achieved in 3 stages. The first stage is to increase the volume of procurement of the goods that are already produced in Kazakhstan. The second stage includes active support to production of non-hightech goods based on existing and new factories. The third stage stipulates creation of joint ventures with foreign companies for production of high-tech goods. By Maksim Popov