Dealine looms: over Kashagan's fate
Astana renews Kashagan attack
Kazakhstan renewed its attack on the AgipKCO consortium, which is developing the Kashagan field, this morning, ahead of a 30 November deadline set for talks to resolve the row.
Kazakhstan has set the deadline for its talks with the Eni-led group of Western oil companies to settle a long-running dispute over cost overruns and production delays at the Caspian Sea oilfield.
Speaking atoday, Deputy Finance Minister Daulet Yergozhin said the ministry was pressing ahead with separate tax checks into the consortium's activities but did not specify what the problem was.
"We have questions," he told Reuters in the capital Astana. "We will get answers to our inquiries over the next few days, then take a week to form a claim and after that we will be ready to present it... Definitely before the end of this year."
Yergozhin had said before that Kazakhstan's tax authorities had a number of questions about the consortium's tax payments and were conducting a planned audit.
Talks on the future of Kashagan have dragged on since August.
Kazakhstan has accused Eni and its partners - Shell, ExxonMobil, Total , ConocoPhillips and Inpex Holdings - of ecological and other violations.
It has demanded a compensation of more than $10 billion and a bigger role for state energy company KazMunaiGaz.