Moody's assigns provisional (P)Baa3 rating to proposed international bonds of National Company KazMunayGaz (Kazakhstan)

/Moody's Investors Service, Moscow, November 2, 10, KASE headline/ - Moody's Investors Service has today assigned a provisional (P)Baa3 rating to the proposed bonds of up to USD1.5 billion to be issued by National Company KazMunayGas (KMG NC or The Group). RATINGS RATIONALE The new bond will be issued under the recently updated USD 7.5 billion global medium-term note programme. The instrument will rank pari passu with all senior unsecured and unsubordinated obligations of KMG NC. The proceeds are expected to be utilized in 2011 for the refinancing of the existing indebtedness of the group, as well as for funding the capital investment under the Kashagan oil project. Moody will assign a definitive rating to the new instrument following the conclusive review of the final documentation. A definitive rating may differ from the provisional rating. Moody's last rating action on KMG NC was on 29 October 2010, when the rating agency downgraded the group's issuer rating (and the ratings of four of its key subsidiaries) by one notch to Baa3 and changed the outlook on all the ratings to stable from negative. For more details, please refer to Moody's press release dated 29 October 2010. The principal methodologies used in this rating were Global Integrated Oil & Gas Industry published in November 2009, and Government-Related Issuers: Methodology Update published in July 2010. Headquartered in Astana, Kazakhstan, KMG NC is a wholly state-owned (through the SamrukKazyna holding company), vertically integrated oil and gas operator with core operations in exploration and production, refining, domestic oil and gas transportation, and marketing and trading of oil and petroleum products sectors. In 2009, the group generated around USD10.8 billion in revenues and EBIT of USD3.3billion. REGULATORY DISCLOSURES Information sources used to prepare the credit rating are the following: parties involved in the ratings, parties not involved in the ratings, public information and confidential and proprietary Moody's Investors Service information. Moody's Investors Service considers the quality of information available on the issuer or obligation satisfactory for the purposes of assigning a credit rating. MOODY'S adopts all necessary measures so that the information it uses in assigning a credit rating is of sufficient quality and from sources MOODY'S considers to be reliable including, when appropriate, independent third-party sources. However, MOODY'S is not an auditor and cannot in every instance independently verify or validate information received in the rating process. Please see ratings tab on the issuer/entity page on Moodys.com for the last rating action and the rating history. The date on which some Credit Ratings were first released goes back to a time before Moody's Investors Service's Credit Ratings were fully digitized and accurate data may not be available. Consequently, Moody's Investors Service provides a date that it believes is the most reliable and accurate based on the information that is available to it. Please see the ratings disclosure page on our website www.moodys.com for further information. Please see the Credit Policy page on Moodys.com for the methodologies used in determining ratings, further information on the meaning of each rating category and the definition of default and recovery. Moscow Sergei Grishunin Asst Vice President - Analyst Corporate Finance Group Moody's Eastern Europe LLC Telephone: +7 495 228 6060 Facsimile: +7 495 228 6091 Paris Eric de Bodard MD - Corporate Finance Corporate Finance Group Moody's France SAS JOURNALISTS: 44 20 7772 5456 SUBSCRIBERS: 44 20 7772 5454 Moody's Eastern Europe LLC 7th floor, Four Winds Plaza 21 1st Tverskaya-Yamskaya St. Moscow 125047 Russia [2010-11-02]