TURKMENISTAN: CHEVRON TO PARTNER WITH WINTERSHALL

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ASHGABAT 000365 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE FOR SCA/CEN, EEB PLEASE PASS TO USTDA DAN STEIN ENERGY FOR EKIMOFF/THOMPSON COMMERCE FOR HUEPER E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/24/2018 TAGS: PGOV PINR EPET GE TX SUBJECT: TURKMENISTAN: CHEVRON TO PARTNER WITH WINTERSHALL Classified By: CDA Richard E. Hoagland: 1.4(B),(D). ¶1. (C) SUMMARY: Country Manager for German oil firm Wintershall, Cal Sandhu (protect throughout),told EmbOff during a March 20 tour d'horizon his company and Chevron are negotiating a partnership in Turkmenistan that could be announced as early as June. More speculatively, he also suggested that Turkmenistan's government -- and likely President Berdimuhamedov himself -- is hesitant to give Russian oil companies in general and Gazprom in particular too much power over Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon sector. He suggested this is the real reason the ConocoPhillips/Lukoil partnership is having so many problems bringing its production sharing agreement bid to a successful conclusion -- and the reason that Berdimuhamedov remained cool during a March 14 meeting with hydrocarbon agencies to Gazprom's March 11 announcement that it was prepared to buy Central Asian gas at "European prices." Sandhu briefly discussed other issues, including unprecedented government assistance that Canadian oil firm Buried Hill is receiving (perhaps because of alleged bribes to the president and other officials),and the State Agency for Hydrocarbon Resources' ongoing difficulties in coping with a tough, technically demanding portfolio, which reportedly led six weeks ago to the agency's director, Byrammurat Muradov, to offer to resign. END SUMMARY. WINTERSHALL AND CHEVRON: PARTNERS IN TURKMENISTAN ¶2. (C) During a March 20 meeting, Wintershall's Country Manager Cal Sandhu told EmbOff Wintershall and Chevron have identified a potentially mutual benefit from partnering in Turkmenistan. Wintershall would bring to the partnership PSAs for two (and possibly more) offshore Caspian Sea blocks, while Chevron would bring funding and tremendous onshore drilling experience. (COMMENT: Sandhu estimates that developing Turkmenistan's on-shore production to meet the 2030 Plan alone will take tens of billions of dollars per year, which Turkmenistan does not have. Post agrees -- one of the reasons that we believe Turkmenistan will either need to allow a major oil company onshore, or cut back substantially its president's expectations and development plans. END COMMENT.) Sandhu believes that the authorities in Turkmenistan are interested in seeing at least one major U.S. company and one EU company working in Turkmenistan, and will favor this two-in-one arrangement. The two companies are currently carrying out negotiations in London, and expect that their respective presidents will meet and discuss the arrangement further in London during the April 17-18 "Oil and Gas in Turkmenistan" conference. A signed agreement could be announced by June of this year. NO RUSSIANS IN TURKMENISTAN'S UPSTREAM? ¶3. (C) Claiming to meet biweekly with both Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers for Oil and Gas Tachberdi Tagiyev and Executive Director of the State Agency for Management and Use of Hydrocarbon Resources Byrammurat Muradov, Sandhu said Turkmenistan is very pleased to have major western oil companies wanting to do business in Turkmenistan and believes that Turkmenistan will allow Chevron or another western company to work onshore -- eventually. He suggested ConocoPhillips, which has been negotiating an offshore PSA with Turkmenistan for an extremely long time has been hindered, rather than helped, by its affiliation with Lukoil. Sandhu claims to have been told by host government officials that Turkmenistan does not want to have Russian companies present in the upstream. (NOTE: This was the second time in 48 hours we heard this assertion from foreign businessmen active in Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon sector. END NOTE.) Cognizant of Gazprom's already massive role in the midstream ASHGABAT 00000365 002 OF 004 and the fact that Gazprom reportedly has been angling to form a partnership to work in Turkmenistan, the authorities are dragging their feet on ConocoPhillips not because they are unsure about working with ConocoPhillips, but rather, because they do not want Lukoil in the equation. TURKMENISTAN'S HOTTEST CASPIAN BLOCK ¶4. (C) Sandhu said that Wintershall, which has a PSA for the old Maersk blocks 11 and 12, sometime between late April and mid-June will carry out exploratory drilling. After the results are in, Wintershall, Petronas, and Dragonoil have agreed they will share their seismic imaging data to develop a better picture of Caspian Sea and figure out whether there are any other blocks worth bidding on. According to Sandhu, nobody has ever carried out imaging of Turkmenistan's offshore blocks 1-6. "Everyone knows" that ConocoPhillips/Lukoil is bidding on blocks 19, 20 and 21; there is some interest in block 22; but block 23 is "hot," with seven companies -- including the French firm Total, BP and Wintershall itself -- that have submitted expressions of interest. BURIED HILL: PROFITING FROM UNPRECEDENTED ASSISTANCE ¶5. (C) Sandhu agreed that Buried Hill does not have the experience, capital, or technology to begin drilling in the (block III) Serdar fields. Sandhu, who claims to know Buried Hill CEO Roger Haines very well, has described him as a "wheeler-dealer" who most likely is more interested in using Buried Hill's Block III PSA for speculative reasons than because of a long-term drilling commitment. Sandhu suggested that after carrying out seismic imaging of the waters off Serdar and doing some exploratory drilling, Haines will likely seek to resell the PSA at a substantial profit. In Sandhu's view, by the time Haines has skimmed "several 100 million dollars" off the top of the selling price, the block will be priced too high to be worth bidding on. ¶6. (C) Pointing to the picture of President Berdimuhamedov hanging in his office and rubbing his thumb and first two fingers together in the signal for "corruption," Sandhu commented that Buried Hill is getting unprecedented facilitation assistance from the State Agency -- presumably at the president's order. He related one recent instance in which the State Agency went to Dragonoil with an urgent request for one of its barges, but would not tell Dragonoil what it needed the barge for. Dragonoil submitted to the State Agency a bill for the use of the barge, and several days later Buried Hill called to find out how to pay the bill. When Dragonoil went to the State Agency about the bill, the State Agency was very angry that Dragonoil had found out that the barge was being used by Buried Hill because the use was supposed to be a secret. PRESIDENT LOOKING FOR BALANCE IN GAS EXPORTS? ¶7. (C) According to Sandhu, Turkmengaz Chairman Yagshygeldi Kakayev, who went to Moscow to meet with Gazprom CEO Andrei Miller the sencond week of March, returned to Ashgabat very pleased with Miller's promises of more money for Turkmenistan's gas and convinced that Russia is looking out for Turkmenistan's interests. However, Sandhu said, elsewhere he has heard that the government has not yet decided to commit its gas to Russia. Noting that the president had a meeting March 14 at the Ministry of Oil and Gas, he said that it was clear that the president, at least, recognizes the dangers of selling all Turkmenistan's gas to Russia. As a result, there was substantial discussion during the meeting of the new Chinese pipeline -- and the president ASHGABAT 00000365 003 OF 004 also held open the possibilities of a Trans-Afghanistan and a Trans-Caspian pipeline in much the same language as he had used during the May 2007 trilateral summit in Turkmenbashy with Presidents Berdimuhamedov, Putin and Nazarbayev, following the agreement to rebuild the Caspian littoral pipeline. EMPIRE-BUILDING IN TURKMENISTAN, CHINESE STYLE ¶8. (C) Although Turkmenistan has been busy trumpeting its increased production in the South Yoloten/Osman fields and its 2007 natural gas sales agreement with the Chinese, Sandhu suggested that Chinese companies drilling on the right bank of the Amu Darya River are "never" going to be able to produce the 30 billion cubic meters per year that Turkmenistan has committed to send to China for the next 30 years. Without greatly boosted production, Turkmenistan also will not be able to make up the difference, as it promised to do in its contract with China. Sandhu suggested that, after a few years of gas delivery shortfalls, the Chinese could seek as compensation additional production sharing agreements to work other blocks in the Amu Darya basin. TAGIYEV, THE UNCROWNED KING OF HYDROCARBONS ¶9. (C) Sandhu characterized Deputy Prime MinisterTagiyev as a bluff, old-style oil and gas technocrat, very capable in hydrocarbons, but without a strategic vision. Several times in meetings, Tagiyev has offered to step in and help Wintershall cut through red tape -- and Sandhu believes that he would do so. However, Sandhu added, Tagiyev also has a "kingly" habit of making demands with no regard for the reality of what it takes in time or resources to fulfill them. According to Sandhu, Berdimuhamedov trusts Tagiyev because he is very happy with what he is doing -- Tagiyev has his domain, over which he has absolute power -- but lacks the ambition and ability to do anything different. ¶10. (C) By contrast, State Agency Director Muradov is probably much smarter than Tagiyev, but is also way out of his league in working hydrocarbon issues. He is "very Turkmen," working his people very hard -- often keeping them until 10:30 at night -- and cursing them in reportedly very foul language if he is displeased with their work. While State Agency personnel are continuing to make progress in learning about Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon industry, they still have a long way to go. Sandhu recounted one recent story in which Petronas wanted to hook a feeder pipeline up with the main line, and asked for permission to spend $250,000 to hire a pipe-laying barge with a crane to lift the pipeline up slightly so that the connection could be made. According to Sandhu, the State Agency refused this expense, suggesting that the platform crane could do the job instead. Petronas used the platform crane, as ordered, and ended up damaging the platform so badly that it could not be used for almost two months. This miserly micromanagement on the State Agency's part led to almost $4 million in lost production revenue for Petronas. ¶11. (C) Sandhu also claimed that, more than a year after the State Agency's establishment, it still lacks the authority to sign contracts. According to Sandhu, the State Agency's charter, which gives it contractingthat authority, has yet to be drafted, because nobody in the Justice Ministry or the State Agency -- the lead bodies in drafting the document -- has the requisite knowledge to carry out the task. PRESIDENT REFUSED MURADOV'S RESIGNATION ¶12. (C) Sandhu said what surprised him most about the ASHGABAT 00000365 004 OF 004 president's March 14 visit to the Ministry of Oil and Gas was that Muradov emerged from the meeting with his job intact. Sandhu claimed that Tagiyev had told the president that Muradov was useless because he does not understand the technical aspects of the hydrocarbon business. Upon hearing of Tagiyev's comments, Muradov had gone to the president six or seven weeks ago and offered his resignation. According to Sandhu, the president refused to accept Muradov's resignation: "In my government, officials do not resign. They are only fired." Sandhu speculated that the president refused to accept Muradov's resignation because there is nobody else to replace him. Although Kakayev, a technocrat and an oil professional, has the technical knowledge and is very close to Tagiyev, there would be nobody available who could replace him at Turkmengaz. While Muradov would probably be moved to the position of Minister of Finance -- a position in which he would be happy and do very well, according to Sandhu -- the president needs him for now in the State Agency. ¶13. (C) COMMENT: Sandhu, who has been in Turkmenistan for over a year, is a genial interlocutor who seems to get along reasonably well with Turkmenistan's hydrocarbon authorities. He is a good source for news and views making the rounds in hydrocarbon circles. His stories about Buried Hill and Petronas are believable, given the players involved. We note other contacts have separately confirmed both that Muradov is a difficult boss, and that he and Tagiyev have a poor working relationship. END COMMENT. HOAGLAND