OREANDA-NEWS. During today's visit of the Minister of Investment and Development Aset Isekeshev and the Minister of Energy Vladimir Shkolnik to Uralsk, Karachaganak Petroleum Operating B.V. (KPO) signed a number of joint agreements, which are aimed at fostering the local content development in the Karachaganak project.

The signing ceremony was held as part of the Local Content Forum organised by the WKO Akimat. Attending the ceremony were the members of the RoK Government, WKO Authorities, PSA, KPO Partners, and representatives of the region's business community.

In particular, KPO reached the following joint agreements :

1) Memorandums of Understanding for new contracts totalling to over USD 118 million with nine Kazakhstani companies - BATYS KAZAKHSTAN KUAT SERVICE LLP, CAIH POWER LLP, RAUANNALCO LLP, KAZBURGAS JSC, MONTAZHSPETSSTROY JSC, PGS KAZAKHSTAN LLP, SPC ECOGEOMUNAIGAS LLP, AKSAIAUTOTRANS JSC, BURLINGAZSTROY JSC.

2) A trilateral MoU between WKO Akimat, KPO, and PSA Authority for the implementation of WKO and Burlin Region social and infrastructure projects in 2015-2017 totalling to USD 90 million.

3) A Memorandum on Co-operation between KPO and the PSA Authority in relation to commencement of the tender for the provision of conceptual design (FEED) services for the Karachaganak Expansion Project (KEP). KPO together with the PSA Authority have agreed to set up the following tender requirements:

not less than 40% but with a target of 50% of total man-hours should be executed on the territory of the RoK;

not less than 40% but with a target of 50% of total man-hours should be executed by the Kazakh partner;

maximization of Kazakh partner participation in designing of complex technological facilities. (ranging from simple to more complex).

Commenting on signing the agreements, KPO General Director, Damiano Ratti, said: "KPO and the Partners take very seriously the RoK Government's drive towards creating production and service clusters around Karachaganak and are fully committed to carry through the proposed activities both within the current scope of Aktau Declaration and as part of our future expansion projects.

"I hope these new multi-million dollar agreements will provide further impetus for the development of local potential and continued growth of the region's industrial sector.

"In 2014, KPO also signed a number of joint agreements aimed at supporting production and service clusters in the West Kazakhstan region. In particular, I would like to mention our successful co-operation with the Aksai Industrial Park, Tenaris Global Services Kazakhstan Ltd and General Electric Oil & Gas - Nuovo Pignone. A recent example includes a Joint Venture agreement with Tecninco, which is the consortium of Italian Tecnomare and a Kazakh company Caspian Engineering, with a new office opened in Aksai last week, which will carry out the front end engineering design for some of our major projects - fostering knowledge transfer from international companies such as Tecnomare to local resources", added Damiano Ratti.

KPO have recently finalised economic and technical assessments of Karachaganak Expansion Project, known as KEP. The KEP local content strategy is focused on the localization of goods, works and services. This project will drive the creation of new jobs and is planned to foster skills development. In addition, it will contribute to long-term development of the local supply chain coupled with the transfer of technologies through establishment of joint ventures between interested local and international companies.

KPO is one of the first companies in Kazakhstan to successfully introduce a Local Content Development Programme that has more than three thousand Kazakh companies to become involved into the successful development of Karachaganak. As of today, these companies for the period of 1998 - 2014 have received orders from KPO for over USD 4 billion.

Today, Karachaganak is one of the largest international projects in Kazakhstan, with total investments exceeding USD 19 billion.