KAZAKHSTAN

1. ENERGY, ECONOMIC AND ELECTRICITY INFORMATION

1.1 General Overview

Kazakhstan is a newly independent Euro-Asian republic, created in 1991 with the dissolution of the former USSR. The total length of its borders is more than 15,000 kilometres and it has an area of 2.7 million square kilometres. To the west of the country is Eastern Europe. To the east and to the southeast are the Altai and Tyan Shyan mountains. Kazakhstan borders with China in the southeast, with Ural and Siberia regions of Russia in the north, and with Central Asian countries, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, in the south. It has a coastline of 2 320 kilometres on the Caspian Sea. The climate is strongly continental, but with wide variations throughout the territory. Average temperatures in January range from -18oC in the north to -3oC in the south; July averages are 19oC in the north and 30oC in the south. Levels of precipitation are equally varied with average annual rainfall in mountainous regions reaching 1,600 mm and central desert areas less than 100 mm.

Kazakhstan's population is 14.9 million from more than 100 nationalities (Figure 1), but mainly Kazakh and Russian. In July 2003, the population growth rate was about +0.3%. The population density is estimated at 5.59 people per square kilometre (Table 1). The government disposes in Astana, the capital of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

FIG. 1. Composition of population of the Republic of Kazakhstan

TABLE 1. POPULATION INFORMATION

Source: IAEA Energy and Economic Database.
July 2003 - Statistical Bulletin 9/2003

1.1.1. Economic Indicators

The break-up of the USSR in December 1991 and the collapse of demand for Kazakhstan's traditional heavy industry products resulted in a short-term contraction of the economy, with the steepest annual decline occurring in 1994. In 1995-97, the pace of the government programme of economic reform and privatization quickened, resulting in a substantial shifting of assets into the private sector. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium agreement to build a new pipeline from western Kazakhstan's Tengiz oil field to the Black Sea increases prospects for substantially larger oil exports in several years. Kazakhstan's economy again turned downward in 1998 with a 2% decline in GDP due to slumping oil prices and the August financial crisis in Russia. The recovery of international oil prices in 1999, combined with a well-timed tenge devaluation and a bumper grain harvest, pulled the economy out of recession in 2000. The government has embarked upon an industrial policy designed to diversify the economy away from over dependence on the oil sector by developing light industry. Historical Gross Domestic Product (GDP) data are given in Table 2.

TABLE 2. GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT (GDP)

Source: IAEA Energy and Economic Database.
July 2003 - Statistical Bulletin 9/2003

1.1.2. Energy Situation

Kazakhstan, the second largest of the former Soviet republics in territory, possesses enormous fossil fuel reserves (see Table 3) as well as plentiful supplies of other minerals and metals. It also is a large agricultural - livestock and grain - producer. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources and also on a growing machine-building sector specializing in construction equipment, tractors, agricultural machinery, and some defence items.

TABLE 3. ESTIMATED ENERGY RESERVES

Source: IAEA Energy and Economic Database.

Power plants fuelled with coal and black oil are the basis of Kazakhstan's electrical energy. Coal is the country's largest industry, with planned further development if corresponding investments are secured. Coal reserves are estimated at 64 billion tons. Annual hard coal production is about 111.8 million metric tons, brown coal production is estimated at 4.6 million metric tons. Kazakhstan also has a well developed oil and gas industry. More than 1 600 oil and gas fields have been located in Tengiz and Karachaganak containing more than 2.9 billion tons of conditional fuel. Natural gas production was estimated at 5 416 million cubic metres in 1993. Kazakhstan has begun building a major oil pipeline, 1 200 kilometres from the west to the east. Construction of three new oil refineries is planned. Every year, about 25 million tons of liquid hydrocarbons and seven billion cubic meters of natural gas are extracted. About 20% of the world's uranium reserves are in Kazakhstan. Table 4 shows the energy statistics.

TABLE 4. ENERGY STATISTICS(*)