Today, October 16th, a meeting on the WTO was held with the participation of ministries and O&G operators KMG, NCOC, TCO and Total Dunga. The meeting was attended by the representatives of National Chamber of Entrepreneurs ‘Atameken’, Petrocouncil.kz, Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development, the Ministry of Trade and Integration of Kazakhstan, PSA LLP (authority of Kashagan and Karachaganak oil field development), National oil company KazMunayGas, KMG Karachaganak LLP, KMG Kashagan BV, and others.

Since Kazakhstan entered the WTO, the country must follow international standards limiting state intervention in local content in the procurement of goods under new contracts with subsoil users. Therefore, Kazakhstan was given an interim stage until 2021 to regulate the protection of local content. At the meeting, company representatives wondered if local content requirements would remain in relation to PSA and Tengiz contracts from 2021.

As a result of the meeting, it was agreed that the local content rules in large contracts (TCO, NCOC and KPO) will remain in effect after 2021 since stabilized contracts have been signed with large operators under PSAs, these operators will also adhere to their local content development programs. For other projects, the WTO rules will cover them. This is a unified position of all three ministries regarding large operators and local content.

It was also agreed that the authorized body, the Ministry of Energy will issue an official position on this issue in order to inform the O&G market.