RUSSIA, KAZAKHSTAN SIGN AGREEMENTS TO DEVELOP CASPIAN SHELF, LAUNCH SATELLITE

ASTANA, JANUARY 9, RIA NOVOSTI - Petroleum bosses of Russia and Kazakhstan have signed a contract together to develop Caspian shelf oilfields. The arrangement concerns the Tyub-Karagan and Atashskaya fields in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian.

Vaghit Alekperov, LUKoil Co. president, and Uzaakbai Karabalin, KazMunaigas Co. president, signed the contract immediately after bilateral summitry, in the presence of Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.

More documents were signed in the summiteers' presence in Astana, Kazakh capital, on this eventful day.

Thus, Alexander Medvedev, Director-General of Russia's Khrunichev space research-cum-production centre, and Arman Dunayev, Kazakh Investment Fund president, made a contract to manufacture and orbit a telecommunication satellite. Alexander Kuznetsov, Deputy Director-General of the Rosaviacosmos aerospace agency, and Yuri Lavrenenko, Kazakhstan's acting Minister of Transport and Telecommunications, signed a memorandum of mutual understanding to manufacture and launch a Kazakh communication and broadcasting satellite.