Photo: inform.kz
The British oil and gas company Victoria Oil & Gas has filed a lawsuit against Kazakhstan, which has been registered with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The Telegram channel ENERGY MONITOR was the first to report on the case.
The dispute dates back to 2021, when the company initially threatened to sue Kazakhstan for hundreds of millions of dollars over the annulment of its contract to develop the Kemerkol field in the Atyrau region. At the time, however, no legal action was taken.
Victoria Oil & Gas acquired a 100 percent stake in the Kemerkol field from Saga Creek Gold Ltd in 2005 for $8.5 million. The company drilled several wells and estimated the field’s geological reserves at 15 million metric tons of oil. However, in 2008, its subsoil use contract was revoked. That same year, the rights to Kemerkol were transferred to the company Bakyt Tau for 360 million tenge ($713,000 at today’s exchange rate), and in 2016, to Ap-Nafta Operating for 1.36 billion tenge ($2.7 million at today’s rate).
“The field is clearly not worth hundreds of millions of dollars (...). It is more likely that the lawsuit has a political rather than economic motive,” the Telegram channel noted.
It is worth mentioning that back in 2021, Respublika linked Victoria Oil & Gas to Kazakh oligarch Askar Alshinbayev, who was reportedly a 23.7 percent shareholder in the company.
