Kazakhstan and Russia join in power projects

President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan has made public several power engineering joint projects with Russia. According to Nazarbayev, Russia and Kazakhstan will shortly sign a long-term (5 or 10-year) contract on Kazak oil transit across Russia, provided an agreement is reached on transit rates.

Astana would like to pay the same rates as Russian producers do, while Moscow insists on higher rates. Nazarbayev went on to say that work is also under way on forming a joint venture with United Energy Systems (UES) on the basis of the Ekibastuz GRES regional electric power plant and Gazprom's joint project with Kazakhstan's gas companies on Kazak gas transportation through Russian pipelines.
The question of the parallel operation of the Kazak and Russian power grids is also to be tackled in the future.