PSAs between Kazakhstan, int’l companies were done in a commercially viable way - U.S. Ambassador

U.S. Ambassador in Kazakhstan Daniel Rosenblum shared his thoughts with Kazinform News Agency correspondent Danira Iskakova on whether the production sharing agreements made between Kazakhstan and international companies in oil and gas sector in the 1990s should be made public or not.

“Those agreement were between the Government of Kazakhstan and private companies, some of which were U.S. companies, some were other international companies. … We are not responsible for monitoring them, but there is a reason for commercial agreements to be structured a certain way that preserves the rights of the investor and also is in the interests of the country in which the investment is taking place, in this case Kazakhstan,” said the U.S. diplomat, pointing out that there are lots of commercial reasons, economic reasons, why agreements are written the way they are.

“I have no reason to think that those agreements in the 1990s are any different. I think they were done in a very commercially viable way,” Ambassador Rosenblum stressed.

“I don’t have an opinion as to whether they should be public or not public at all. All I can say is that, we believe that those agreements over time have served the interests of the investing companies and also people and the Government of Kazakhstan,” he added.