On September 25, the 26th meeting of the Committee of Oil and Gas Industry of the NCE RK "Atameken" was held under the chairmanship of Daniyar Abulgazin.

The meeting was also attended by the Deputy Chairmen of the Board of the NCE RK "Atameken" Yeldos Ramazanov and Rustam Zhursunov, the General Director of the "KAZENERGY" Association Asset Magauov, the Executive Director of the "KAZENERGY" Association Rustem Kabzhanov, the Deputy Chairman of the Board of KazMunaiGas for the transportation, processing and marketing of oil Daniyar Tiesov, general director of KazMunaiGaz Onimderi LLP (KMGO) Kuandyk Kulmurzin, as well as representatives of industry associations and business.

The first speaker was Asset Magauov, reporting on the execution of protocol orders and on the current activities of the "KAZENERGY" Association. Further, the consultant of the "KAZENERGY" Association, the partner of "Avantgarde Group" LLP Zhanat Musabayev made an "Improvement of the fuel market. Exchange trade" report, where he dwelt in detail on the current problems of the system of state regulation of the fuel market.

"There is no" benchmark ", that is, there is no practice in Kazakhstan for determining the "fair" market price of petroleum products, and there are also no "rules of the game". For example, what are the factors that affect the price, to be justified? And lastly, there is no equal access to resources from all the subjects of the fuel market," - Zhanat Musabayev said.

The introduction of the mechanism of exchange trade in fuels and lubricants, according to the speaker, will allow to create a price benchmark for the entire market, will lead to recognition of the prices of exchange transactions as off-exchange transactions, market, and will provide equal access to fuel and lubricants resources.

In turn, the chairman of the board of ETC JSC, Kurmet Orazayev, cited the experience of Russia and Uzbekistan in organizing the exchange market, detailing the terms of its launch.

The meeting participants raised a question regarding the accreditation of potential participants in the organized commodity market of oil products, and this is more than 80 companies.

"I think it's worth discussing this in more detail. It is necessary to gather all the representatives of the market, interested parties in both fuels and lubricants and agricultural producers to study this issue," - Daniyar Abulgazin suggested.

Rustem Kabzhanov told about the next issue on the agenda, having reported on the current situation on the issue of changes in environmental legislation. At present, the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan has developed a Concept for the draft of the Environmental Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan and a draft law on the introduction of changes and additions to certain legislative acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on environmental issues. The project is planned to be completed by the end of this year. The speaker clarified that all the comments and suggestions of the branch were taken into account. In addition, KAZENERGY together with the Ernst & Young Consulting Company LLP is conducting an analysis of the changes in the environmental legislation taking into account the experience of the OECD countries.

Daniyar Abulgazin stressed that, taking into account the changes introduced into the Code, industry enterprises will be carefully inspected. Accordingly, they will need modernization of production, which in turn will require a huge investment.

"I propose to conduct a thorough explanatory work in this spectrum, to make it clear what the new Environmental Code will entail. The business should be ready for changes and actively join at the development stage," - Daniyar Abulgazin thinks.

The closing speech was made by a representative of NC "KazMunayGas" JSC on the surplus of light oil products.

As you know, modernization of the Pavlodar refinery plant has already been completed and Atyrau and Shymkent refineries are at the stage of pilot operation. By the end of the year, a surplus of light oil products is expected in the amount of about 300 thousand tons.

In accordance with the Agreement between the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation on trade and economic cooperation in the field of oil and oil products supplies to Kazakhstan, a ban on the export of light petroleum products from the RK has been established. Therefore, changes were made to the Agreement for export. To date, all domestic procedures have been completed in Kazakhstan, while the Russian Federation is still at the stage of approval of the Protocol, in the future these changes should be ratified. In addition, the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan is considering the issue of supplying the excess of light oil products to Kyrgyzstan.

However, in the sphere of opening of exports, the question arises at the rates of the export customs duty (ECD) for light oil products. The calculation of the size of the rates itself needs to be reviewed. At present, the ECD operates at a rate of USD 168.88 per ton.

"It is more expedient to apply the direct linking of the ECD rate to gasoline and diesel fuel to the ECD rate for oil, in analogy with the methodology of the Russian Federation, since in the future the resulting disproportion will not allow Kazakhstani products to compete for export markets with the Russian product," - the speaker summed up.

Summarizing, Daniyar Abulgazin stressed that the issue is important, and to avoid sharp price jumps, analysis from the market is needed.