On October 5, in the course of the 7th St. Petersburg International Gas Forum, Russian energy major Gazprom, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), represented by PetroChina vice president, and Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil and gas company KazMunayGas inked a Memorandum of Understanding setting the framework for a long-term strategic cooperation in natural gas vehicle (NGV) market, particularly via the development of the indispensable natural gas filling infrastructure on the Europe-China International Transport Corridor. According to the press release issued by Gazprom, the document provides for, inter alia, an assessment of the potential number of gas-powered cargo vehicles and the amount of natural gas that could be used for refueling vehicles at the Russian, Kazakh and Chinese sections of the route up until 2030. Performed analysis is to serve as the basis for the creation of a tripartite roadmap with the help of which natural gas filling network will be developed along the aforementioned corridor.
Following the realization, back in 2009, of a 50-50 joint venture between CNPC and KazMunayGas, a 2.228km-long oil pipeline stretching from the port of Atyrau along the Caspian coast to Alashankou, in China’s northwest Xinjiang region, the two countries have been kept steadily interested in extending energy collaboration on new infrastructure projects, as shown by this latest agreement. Having been described by the Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev as the ‘construction of the century’, the emerging Europe-Western China Transport Corridor constitutes one of the potential routes developed under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The EWC ITC aims to link the Chinese port of Lianyungang, in the Yellow Sea, with the port of St. Petersburg, in the Baltic Sea. An alternative Belt and Road corridor between the EU and China passes through Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, avoiding Russia (Piraeus to Khorgos corridor). In both cases, Kazakhstan has good chances of rendering from a landlocked country into a transcontinental energy and logistics hub of the wider Eurasian space. Besides, as stated on October 4 by Luc Devigne, deputy managing director for Europe and Central Asia in the European External Action Service (EEAS), during a conference on EU-Kazakhstan relations, Astana is the ‘living proof’ that it could be possible for Central Asian countries to maintain good relations both with the EU and Russia.
Available online at: http://www.caspianpolicy.org/energy/caspian-energy-insight-october-11-2017/#5