More power to Kazakhstan
Sir: Elliot Wilson rails against the alleged bureaucracy, corruption and nepotism that he argues are strangling business opportunities for foreign investors in Kazakhstan (Business, 28 April). But his three examples of Western companies who have ‘decided to leave’ are misleading.
PetroKazakhstan, which emerged from nowhere as Canadian-based Hurricane Oil, was very happy to sell its Kazakh assets to the Chinese national oil corporation in 2005 for more than $4 billion. The same is true of Nations Energy, which in 2006 was sold by the owners for almost $2 billion. And far from being pushed out by fickle Kazakh bureaucrats, British Gas took a strategic decision to sell its share in the Kashagan oilfield, at a healthy profit, because it wanted to focus on a massive Karachaganak gas field in western Kazakhstan, believed to be the largest foreign operation of the company.
There is, of course, room to further improve conditions. But there would hardly be so many international investors in the country if conditions were as Mr Wilson has described them.
Ambassador Erlan Idrissov London SW7
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