TWO MAJOR KAZAKH OIL FIRMS SIGN CONTRACT

Excerpt from report by Kazakhstan Today news agency web site on 16 June

The Kazakhoil Aktobe oil extracting company and the Alibekmola Neftestroy [Alibekmola oil building] consortium have signed a contract worth over 61m dollars. The chief of the Aktyubinsk regional economic and planning department, Ondasyn Orazalin, told a Kazakhstan-Today news agency correspondent.

He said that the contract provided for services to the oil extracting company in designing, building and equipping new facilities at the Alibekmola deposit in Mugalzhar District of [western] Aktyubinsk Region. Specifically, there are plans that the consortium, which won a tender for services, will install at the deposit a gas purifying facility and equipment to clear harmful substances from oil and do other work.

About 800 new jobs will be created as a result of building the facilities, which are planned to be launched in October this year.

Orazalin said that following the launch of the new facilities oil extraction at the deposit is expected to increase up to 3m t a year. There are plans to extract 1m t of oil at the Alibekmola deposit this year against 420,000 t extracted last year.

[Passage omitted: Kazakhoil Aktobe was set up in 1999]

The Alibekmola Neftestroy consortium comprises the Kazakh Oil and Gas Institute open joint-stock company, the Kazkhimmontazh [Kazakh chemical assembly] open joint-stock company, the KazStroyServis [Kazakhstan building services] open joint-stock company and the Temir Pipe [Iron pipe] limited liability partnership.

Source: Kazakhstan Today news agency web site, Almaty, in Russian 0715 gmt 16 Jun 04

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