Kazakhstan: Energy relations
In the margins of the SCO conference, a bilateral agreement between China and Kazakhstan has furthered Kazakhstan’s trade relations and may potentially regularize Central Asia’s energy market. Here’s the trade portion of the Central Asia NewsNet article, (somewhat edited here). Note that higher energy prices increased the dollar volume:
A. In 2006 [China-Kazakhstani] bilateral trade volume hit USD 8.36 billion, up 22.8% as compared to 2005.
B. During the first half of 2007, the volume of trade turnover reached USD 5.97 billion, up 60.4 % as compared to the first half of 2006.
C. The volume of commodity trade turnover between Kazakhstan and China will reach USD 10 billion in 2007. According to previous plans, this figure was to be reached only by 2010.
D. In their Joint Communiqué, the two parties agreed to 1. cooperate to increase bilateral trade turnover by USD 15 billion by 2015, 2. strike a balance between bilateral export and import flows, and 3. diversify the structure of commodity trade.
A new development may be an SCO Energy Club, with a combination of investment opportunities through a bourse, and, hopefully, a more integrated and even redundant utility plan. Right now, much energy commerce is complicated by Uzbekistan’s intransigence. As Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan develop their hydropower and Kazakhstan concentrates on a Central Asian economic community, Uzbekistan may find that its stubbornness leaves them out of the decision-making process.
Photo: Energy bourse, Montreal, from ville.montreal.qc.ca