Kazakhstan’s President suggests working out an effective system to manage the country’s hydrocarbons

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev has suggested working out an effective system to manage the country’s hydrocarbons riches, Tengrinews.kz reports. “We need an effective system to manage the hydrocarbons wealth; natural riches should feed the economy growth; however, they should no longer be the major source of revenues for the state. That is the key objective of the Government”, President said when speaking at the Eurasia Emerging Markets Forum in Astana September 10. According to him, the Cabinet should consider a variety of scenarios of oil production. “With a conservative scenario in place, we hope to maintain a stable oil production level and exports of petroleum products up to 2050; that would mean stable revenues for the National Oil Fund [accumulating windfall oil revenues]”, Head of State believes. “With an aggressive production scenario, we may run out of capabilities to export crude. For the nation it is enough to produce 2 million barrels. Therefore, the country should strive to secure a sufficient growth to reach that level of production”, the President said. “The overall energy efficiency is closely related to development and use of alternative sources of energy. By 2050 the share of alternative sources should be brought up to 50% (…) Kazakhstan does have all the prerequisites for that”, Mr. Nazarbayev elaborated, adding that by 2020 Kazakhstan should reduce consumption of energy by 2.5% annually. To reach the set goals, the Government should launch a State Agency for Green Energy, establish a Fund to support alternative energy projects, and offer incentives for enterprises to lower energy consumption levels. Kazakhstan is ranked 9th in terms of proven oil reserves. Explored reserves stand at about 6.5 billion tons, with anticipated reserves standing at about 25 billion tons, Newskaz.ru reports. According to the country’s Oil and Gas Ministry, recoverable crude reserves will be sufficient for 50-60 years if the oil production output is brought up to 120 million tons a year by 2020. In 2012 crude and condensed gas production output totaled 79.2 million tons (1.1% down as compared to 2011). The Emerging Markets Forum was created as a not-for-profit initiative to bring together high-level government and corporate leaders from around the world to engage in dialogue on the key economic, financial and social issues facing emerging market countries. The EMF hosts one global meeting and several regional meetings every year. Each meeting is structured around issues that are common to the emerging market economies. The EMF commissions policy experts to write background papers, which provide a starting point for discussion. Participants come from the absolute highest levels of the private and public sectors to engage in open dialogue and implement solutions. The co-Chairmen of the Forum are Michel Camdessus, former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Haruhiko Kuroda, President of the Asian Development Bank, and Fidel V. Ramos, former President of the Philippines. The last Global Meeting of the Emerging Markets Forum was held Oct 14-16, 2012 in Tokyo, Japan.