Oil majors see few risks to Caspian investment
Almaty |Reuters | 05-10-2001
Heavy investment by oil majors in central Asia's oil-rich Caspian region will see no let-up after the suicide attacks on the United States, company executives said yesterday. Speaking at a conference in Kazakhstan, which borders on states which could play a role in any U.S. action against Afghan-istan, oil officials said their projects in the region could weather even a sharp drop in the oil price if global recession hits.
And they saw few risks of any conflict in Afghanistan spilling over into the Caspian.
"We have contingency plans, we look at scenarios for all different oil prices, high prices, low prices," Guy Hollingsworth, president of Chevron Eurasia, said on the sidelines of the KIOGE conference in Almaty.
Chevron, owner of 50 per cent of the Tengizchevroil joint venture developing the vast Tengiz oilfield, was the first U.S. major to enter Kazakhstan after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Like other players in the oil market, it has watched as oil prices slumped by about 20 per cent since the September 11 suicide hijack attacks on New York and Washington and heard the talk of gloom about prospects for global economic growth.
"We don't see prices going low enough to stymie development here in Kazakhstan," Hollings-worth said, adding that Chevron planned to move ahead with its investment in the company even if oil prices fell further.
The president of the Kazakh arm of Russia's biggest oil producer Lukoil, Albert Isangunov, said the current price slump could be seen as a trough in oil's price cycle. "There is nothing for existing or potential investors in the Caspian region to be concerned about. Security in the Republic of Kazakhstan is normal and oil prices are always cyclical anyway," he said.
Anglo-Dutch and British mammoths Royal Dutch Shell and BP also said they were sticking to their plans in the region. BP's senior representative in Moscow, David Reardon, said the company always worked with a "conservative" oil price expectation which had not been breached. |
