Political council of Asar party speaks against sale of shares of Exploration Extraction KazMunayGas for private property

/INTERFAX-KAZAKHSTAN, Astana, August 16, 05/ - Political council of Asar party speaks against sale of shares of Exploration Extraction KazMunayGas for private property. "In the opinion of Political council's of Asar party, plans on shares sale differ from Kazakhstan's long-term interests", - the letter of the party addressed to Daniyal Akhmetov country's prime-minister says. "While oil is the forming factor of Kazakhstan's economy, we consider sale of a state venture dealing with its production and refining to private property as a thoughtless, politically irresponsible, incorrect decision. This step will break efforts of Kazakhstan's president on the development of a strong, economically independent state, which has a national extracting company of the world class", - the letter says. In the Political council's opinion, "considerably grown business activity of EE KazMunayGas JSC on stock markets just increases probability of such the result and causes anxiety of the society". Besides, Asar's governing body in its letter expresses perplexity about the arguments in expediency of the shares sale. "Strategic purpose of sale of shares of Exploration Extraction KazMunayGas, as its representatives said, is borrowing of additional funds for company's development, and also for development of Caspian sea shelf. However this motivation raises doubts for sale of shares can not be connected with company's lack of funds for development. It's also not clear who and how estimated cost of the shareholding", - the letter says. The document contains data evidencing about the constant growth of the company's revenues. The political council in its letter accentuates attention on the fact that staff of EE KazMunayGas JSC comprises Atyrau petroleum refinery JSC, at which fundamental reconstruction is being made due to borrowing. "The sale of the shareholding will result in weakening of state's influence upon the only petroleum refinery controlled by the state and, as a result, will lessen the state's influence upon domestic market of CLM", - the letter says. "The buyer of 49% of shares will get not only a stake in rather effective company, but also some instruments of pressure upon almost the whole oil and gas branch and upon internal and external policy of the country", - the letter says. "There is no confidence that opinions of new shareholders will be the same with our state's ones", - the letter says. Asar party is headed by Dariga Nazarbayeva - the elder daughter of country's head. In the I half of this year over 25 m. tons of crude oil and 5.8 m. tons of condensate were produced that is more by 3.9% and by 57.5% correspondingly than in January-June of 2004. [2005-08-17]