Nov 2003

Uzbekistan has bold plans to expand output and exports. Shafkat Mazhitov, the chief executive of the state-owned oil and gas company, Uzbekneftegaz, says gas exports will grow to 20bn cubic metres a year (cm/y) by 2020. Last year, exports amounted to 7.3bn cm, Derek Brower reports

The country has again appealed for international investors to help realise its upstream potential. The country’s minister of oil and gas industry and mineral resources, Tachberdy Tagiyev, spoke to Derek Brower about his targets and plans for the industry

Oil production is booming in Kazakhstan, which has been more successful in attracting foreign oil investors than other former-Soviet republics. Output is expected to climb from 47m tonnes in 2002 to reach 50m-52m tonnes this year. Ambitious targets call for production to rise to 100m tonnes in 2010 and to 150m tonnes in 2015, writes Isabel Gorst

A major challenge facing Russia’s oil industry is the need for new pipeline capacity to carry rising output to international markets. This is important for the country’s increasingly important role in the world as a reliable crude supplier and the health of the domestic industry, writes Stephen O’Sullivan, co-head of research, UFG

GE Oil & Gas is growing, riding on the back of the increasing industry trend for companies to outsource specialist functions. Nigel Ash talks to the chairman and chief executive officer, Claudi Santiago, at the company’s headquarters in Florence

Italy’s mainland-wide electricity failure of late September might have been a freak occurrence, but it should serve as a reminder of the country’s vulnerability in the supply of electricity. Concern about vulnerability – in oil and gas supplies, as well as electricity – has been a long-running theme of Italian energy policy. Paradoxically, the authorities’ attempts to overcome it – mostly involving heavy-handed regulation – have added to the problem instead of reducing it, Martin Quinlan writes

Market liberalisation and a shift to gas-fired power generation are behind rising Spanish gas and power demand. A spate of activity has attracted the interest of asset-hungry foreign players. James Gavin reports

Recent events in the US – most notably, the power blackout in the northeast this summer and the volatility of natural gas prices – have cast a spotlight on the country’s energy needs, and by extension, on the role of coal in meeting them. Ellen Lask reports

With the green light given by the government for a fourth train at Atlantic LNG (ALNG), Trinidad and Tobago has committed no less than 85.5% of its proved reserves to liquefied natural gas (LNG) production. The four trains will utilise 17.8 trillion cubic feet (cf) of proved reserves of 20.8 trillion cf, writes David Renwick

The trend towards ever-bigger LNG trains could bring about a fourfold production boost by 2020, predicts ExxonMobil’s chairman. Meanwhile, despite years of planning, floating LNG technology, to exploit remote offshore gas reserves, remains hung up on a range of issues. Nigel Ash reports

Barriers are crumbling as liquefied natural gas (LNG) occupies a commanding position among the near-term solutions to shrinking conventional supplies in the US. WJ Simpson reports

Driven by strong Asian demand and booming US imports, LNG is attracting oil majors eager to grab a slice of the gas sector’s most lucrative action. Global LNG trade grew by 8% in the first half of 2003 and analysts expect LNG to continue its recent rapacious growth over the next few years. James Gavin reports