Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

Chinese Tsinghua Company intends to invest around $8 billion in coal processing in Kazakhstan, Kairat Karmanov, the deputy Chairman of the Governing Board of National Export & Investment Agency KAZNEX INVEST, said on November 29.

"The Chinese company has held several meetings with the leadership of Karaganda province where it will develop one of the coal fields. The development capacity is around six million tons of coal per year," Karmanov said.

He added that the Chinese company is expected to invest $2 billion in the first years and $6 billion later.

"Currently, the issues of the road map of the project and the working group are being developed and by late 2013 all necessary documents will be signed. The construction of the coal processing plant in Karaganda province will start next year," Karmanov said.

Kazakhstan occupies the third place in terms of largest reserves and the first place in terms of coal production per capita among the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

Also, Kazakhstan possesses Central Asia's largest recoverable coal reserves, with 37.5 billion short tons of mostly anthracitic and bituminous coal.

The mines currently produce over120 million tons of coal per year, of which 97 million tons are consumed domestically and 22 million tons are exported.

Kazakhstan contains about 4 percent of known world reserves and these reserves are concentrated in 16 main deposits in three coal basins.

Most of the estimated reserves are anthracite reserves from Karaganda, Ekibastuz and Tengiz-Korzhankol basins. The rest is brown coal, concentrated mainly in Maikuben basins. Karaganda coal basin is Kazakhstan's main coal supplier. It produces up to 50 million tons of coal annually.

The Kazakh government considers increasing coal exports to be very important. The country seeks to boost the level of export to 32 million tons by 2015. Russia is the largest importer of Kazakh coal, followed by Ukraine.

The largest companies engaged in coal production in Kazakhstan are Bogatyr Access Komir LLP, Shubarkol Komir JSC, Borly Company, Maikuben West LLP and ArcerlorMittal Temirtau JSC.

Currently all of the large coal miners of Kazakhstan have plans for further investments and business development in coming years.

The Chinese - Kazakh relations have enjoyed rapid development since the establishment of diplomatic relations. China is the largest trading partner of Kazakhstan and Kazakhstan is China's second largest trading partner in the CIS region after Russia.

The trade turnover between Kazakhstan and China is expected to exceed $30 billion in 2013.