Negotiations on the post-Soviet republic’s WTO accession have been on-going for more than 14 years. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the country applied for membership in the WTO in April 1996 and circulated its Memorandum on the Foreign Trade Regime in 1996. Kazakhstan’s Working Party met for the first time in March 1997.

In June 2009, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus decided to try and join the WTO as a single customs territory. Several months later, however, they announced that they would abandon that strategy to again apply as individual countries. WTO officials had indicated that the collective-entry strategy could significantly delay the accession process.

Astana subsequently announced plans to enter the WTO by the end of 2010, but later had to scrap its plans. Earlier this year, Kazkahstan’s cabinet announced that accession into the WTO is one of its priorities for 2011.

In late May, 2011, Zhanar Aitzhanova, the country’s top WTO negotiator, who also serves as minister of economic development and trade said that Kazakhstan officials are now working on finalizing the technical details of its bid.

“While there are some remaining issues like agriculture subsidies and livestock sanitation regulations to be worked out, on major issues we don’t have problems,” she said at a news conference at the Kazakhstan Embassy in Washington.

The protocol on the completion of the bilateral negotiations between the United States and Kazakhstan on Astana’s accession to the WTO was signed on September 21 by the two countries’ governments in Washington.

The signing of the protocol was preceded by technical consultations on the issue of access of U.S. service providers to the Kazakh market. This was one of the key conditions for Kazakhstan’s accession to the WTO.

Of particular interest were the issues of supply of services for companies engaged in the production of oil and natural gas, telecommunications, construction, cross-border and financial services.

According to the minister of economic development and trade, “the reached agreements will create a more favorable climate and stimulate additional investment in the above-mentioned sectors of services, mainly in the processing and creation of new industries in Kazakhstan.” The United States is a key investor in Kazakhstan with foreign direct investment into the republic from 1993 to 2011 amounting to US$40 billion.

“We are considering two or three projects for an amount of up to 100 million euros (US$133 million) and are still considering whether this will be debt or equity,” said Riccardo Puliti, EBRD managing director and head of energy and natural resources.

Kazakhstan, which has tripled oil production in the last decade on its way to becoming Central Asia’s largest economy, is seeking investment to develop wind, solar and hydroelectric projects to reduce a power deficit in parts of the country’s regions.

High speed wind locations are in the southeast mountain passes leading to China, in the Alytau mountain regions in the center of the republic, and in the southwest on the Caspian seaboard.

Renewable energy projects are relatively rare in Kazakhstan, which sits on 3 percent of the world’s recoverable oil reserves. Coal-fired power plants currently accounted for 75 percent of the electricity generated in Kazakhstan, while gas accounted for a further 12 percent and hydroelectric power 9 percent, according to the Industry Ministry data.

But Kazakhstan’s vast steppe has potential for generating wind power, particularly in southern regions of the country that depend largely on electricity imported from nearby Uzbekistan or the distant coal seams of northern Kazakhstan. It also has a plentiful supply of hydro, solar, biomass, and geothermal energy.

Industry Minister Aset Isekeshev said Kazakhstan aimed by 2014 to be generating 1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or slightly over 1 percent of total consumption, from renewable sources. This share should rise to 3 percent by 2020, he said.

Kazakhstan passed primary legislation in 2009 to stimulate investment in renewable energy sources and reduce the environmental impact of power generation.

Benefits of this law include priority land allocation for renewable energy sites and obligatory purchase by transmission companies of electricity generated from renewable sources.

The EBRD’s Puliti said the implementation of new wind farm projects would require the approval of secondary legislation that would define feed-in tariffs, the fee paid by the power distributor or transmission company to the wind farm.

This is likely to be higher than the average power tariff, in order to act as a stimulant for investment in wind power. “In the next six months, it should be approved,” he said.

Kazakhstan could have wind power generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts by 2014, said Andreas Thomas, senior vice-president for business development for Vestas Central Europe, a unit of the Danish wind turbine manufacturer Vestas Wind Systems.

“The pure wind potential in Kazakhstan is much, much higher because they have an enormous land mass,” Thomas told.

Since the beginning of its operations in Kazakhstan, the EBRD has invested over €2.8 billion in over 130 projects in various sectors of the Kazakh economy, mobilizing additional investments in excess of about €6 billion.

The fuel supply contract was signed last week between U.S. Defense Logistics Agency and Gazpromneft Aero-Kyrgyzstan.

“The Americans have to be certain that we can deal with that volume of supplies. And maybe then [we] will start delivering more than 50 percent of the base’s needs,” said Tilek Isayev, head of the Gazpromneft-Aero Kyrgyzstan.

Former Soviet Central Asian nation authorities suspect the current supplier, Gibraltar-registered Mina Corp., of links to the family of former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, overthrown last year — allegations it has denied. Mina’s contract as the sole supplier to the base expires in December, but it can bid to retain a piece of the business.

Fuel sales to the air base in this impoverished have been mired in controversy over lack of transparency. A Gibraltar-registered firm is currently the sole supplier of fuel, but that arrangement is terminating in December.

Manas Center provides logistical support for NATO in Afghanistan and is a major transit hub for U.S. troops flying in and out of the region. The company also supplies fuel to civilian aircraft at the international airport where the base is located.

The new supplier is Gazpromneft-Aero Kyrgyzstan, which is 51 percent owned by a subsidiary of Gazprom and 49 percent by Kyrgyzstan’s government.

U.S. Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Pamela Spratlen told journalists the two sides could sign another contract within 90 days of the initial shipment of fuel that would increase delivery to up to 50 percent of the base’s needs, the Reuters news agency said.

The arrangement could ease concerns about corruption involving fuel supplies to the Manas. The potential for significant revenue also could reduce Moscow’s incentive to seek closure of the U.S. base.

The U.S. Manas air base spends from US$300 million to US$400 million a year on aviation fuel.

“The money coming from fuel supplies to the [Manas] Transit Center will go into Kyrgyzstan’s state budget, and it will be hard to filch it,” Russian Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan Valentin Vlasov said to the Associated Press.

The decree, signed by Prime Minister Karim Massimov on September 5, was published in the national press last Saturday, September 17. The new export duty rates will come into force from September 27.

According to the decree, the new export duty rate for light petroleum products will be US$143.54 per ton (the current rate is US$114.05 per ton), with the rate for heavy petroleum products standing at US$95.69 per ton (the current rate is US$76.03 per ton).

Export duties on crude oil, which have been reintroduced last year at US$20 per ton, before doubling the tariff to US$40 from January 1, 2011, will remain at the same level.

The cabinet expects to raise KZT421.40 billion (around US$2.8 billion) from introducing the new exports duty by the end of the 2011, the Ministry of Finance has said.

The state budget revenues paid in the form of export duty on crude oil made up US$1.67 billion for the first half of 2011, Vice Finance Minister Ruslan Dalenov wrote in his Twitter account July 22.

Energy-rich Kazakhstan had introduced the export duty on crude in May 2008 at the height of the Global Financial Crisis, but reduced them to zero in January 2009 after crude prices plunged.

Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest economy, has doubled crude output over the past decade to become the second-biggest oil producer in the former Soviet Union after Russia. It produced 79.5 million tons of oil and gas condensate in 2010, 4.2 percent up against 2009.

Foreign oil companies control a significant proportion of crude production in Kazakhstan, which holds slightly more than 3 percent of the world’s recoverable oil reserves.

The Chevron-led Tengizchevroil venture is the country’s largest oil producer, while Chinese companies control nearly a quarter of output.

Currently Kazakhstan is facing fuel shortages and fuel price hikes, tengerinews.kz reports. The Oil and Gas Ministry along with the State Agency for Monopolies Control have repeatedly stated that measures will be taken to stabilize the fuel market.

According to the Oil and Gas Ministry estimation, the national oil production output in 2011 will make up 81 million tons, growing to 83 million tons in 2012-2013, to 85 million tons in 2014 and to 95 million tons by 2015.

According to the stats, crude and condensed gas production output for the first seven months of 2011 totaled 46.6 million tons.

Berdymukhammedov predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, who enjoyed a bizarre personality cult during his 21-year rule until he died suddenly of a heart attack in December 2006, had routinely held show trials of top officials to demonstrate his attempts to root out corruption.

Foreign press repeatedly noticed that Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov also enjoys unrestricted authority in this Central Asian country.

Authorities may also be seeking to reassure foreign investors as a group of Turkish companies prepares to seek legal action against Turkmenistan in a bid to recover what they say is more than US$1 billion in unpaid bills for construction work in the former Soviet state, the Associated Press speculates.

“I held a responsible job, in which I embarked on a track of illegal enrichment. I extorted money from businessmen — worth a total of US$3.6 million,” television showed Byashim Begjanov, a former head of international operations at Turkmenistan’s central bank, telling the court.

“I repent for the grave crime I committed,” he said.

Begjanov and two other senior central bank officials were each sentenced to 15 years in jail, which is the maximum penalty in Turkmenistan for economic crimes.

The government has recently reduced maximum prison sentences for economic crimes down from 25 years as part of reforms aimed at liberalizing the justice system.

The gas-rich nation has made waffling efforts to diversify the country’s mostly energy-dependent economy, but many foreign companies remain wary of investing in what remains an opaquely regulated and corruption-riddled market.

Turkmenistan, which holds the world’s fourth-largest reserves of natural gas, is a small nation of approximately 5 million people. It is located in Central Asia and is bordered by the Caspian Sea to the west, Iran and Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the east, and Kazakhstan to the north.

Turkmenistan’s economy is based largely on natural resource extraction. Although the hydrocarbon sector performs well, according to the U.S. Fund for Peace, 58 percent of the population lives below the poverty level.

During the Soviet period, Turkmenistan was one of the poorest republics, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has continued to fall behind its Central Asian neighbors in most areas of development. Infant and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the other Central Asian states, while GDP is lower and economic development is slow in comparison to its neighbors.

Crude Accountability NGO, which focused on environmental justice for petroleum communities in the Caspian Sea region, has named Turkmenistan in its report as the “one of the world’s most closed and repressive countries.”

The festival will be organized by the efforts of Mongolian Association in Ujinbu.

Golomt and Khaan Banks, headhunted in Ulaanbaatar, together with Seoul Global Center and two Korean lenders Woori Bank and Shinhan Bank announced will sponsor the cultural event, infoMongolia.com reports.

South Korea is the largest labor market for Mongolians. Estimates suggest that 38,000 to 40,000 Mongolian’s currently live and work in Republic of Korea. The country now has more Mongolians than Japan, Europe and the US combined.

At the same time, compared to other Asian countries, Mongolia has a relatively small overseas diaspora.

The government of South Korea estimates that one out of every two urban households in Mongolia has a family member working in South Korea.

According to South Korean government figures, 40 percent are residing in the country illegally; other estimates of the proportion of illegal migrants run as high as 70 percent.

Most Mongolians in South Korea are migrant workers employed in heavy industry. Some also run small restaurants, trading companies, and grocery stores in Seoul.

Aside from migrant workers, Mongolians come to South Korea to pursue higher education –around 2000 Mongolians annually. Remittances from Mongolians working in South Korea have become an important source of income to this nation of 2.7 million.

Mongolian women also come to South Korea as the brides of men they met through international marriage agencies; their average age is just 24.9, whereas that of their husbands is 44.5, and many are more educated than their husbands, according to the figures of Asian Workers News.

Mongolia’s trade with South Korea has almost quadrupled over the last decade and the Asia’s fourth biggest economy is now the third largest trading partner of the resource rich country after China and Russia.

According to the Foreign Investment and Foreign Trade Agency of Mongolia, South Korea is the 4th largest investor in Mongolia with total FDI of over US$255 million since 1990.

South Korea is also a key donor who has provided approximately US$137 million since 1990 in committed loans and grants to Mongolia.

Sandwiched between Russian and China, Mongolia is about to lay 3,542 miles of track across the country and to Russia’s Far Eastern sea ports.

Mongolia has grown increasingly dependent on commerce with China since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. More than 75 percent of exports went to PRC in 2009, according to European Union figures.

“Using the Russia route, Mongolia will have better access to a global market rather than just dealing with China,” Chris Weafer, Moscow-based chief strategist at UralSib Financial Corp. said to the Bloomberg. “You need that to maximize the commercial value of its goods. Otherwise China dictates prices.”

The massive infrastructure investment stems from the Mongolian government’s desire to diversify trade and reduce dependence on China.

“The missing link in the Mongolian gold rush now is transportation infrastructure,” said Roland Nash, who helps manage about US$150 million of Russian stocks at Moscow-based hedge fund Verno Investment Management Ltd.

“The key for the Mongolians is to attract investments from as many different countries as possible to lessen their dependence on China.”

When the Dalai Lama visited Mongolia in 2002, China expressed its displeasure by closing the border.

“Who knows, they could do that any time,” Dashbaljir Nemekhbayar, head of the Transportation Ministry’s Finance and Investment Department, told EurasiaNet.

In addition to the desire to build up its own industrial capacity, Mongolia finds Russia to be a more comfortable partner to work with than China, said Alicia Campi, president of the U.S.-Mongolia Advisory Group.

“The Russians, partners since 1949 in Mongolia’s north-south border-to-border sole railway, are a known, basically reliable commodity to Mongolian policymakers and they share Mongolian concern over rapidly increasing Chinese penetration and monopolization of north Asian economic trade,” Campi continued.

The rail improvements could also help Mongolia capitalize on new rare earth taxes and regulations instituted in recent years by China, the world’s dominant rare element producer.

“Modernization of the country’s transportation infrastructure will make Mongolian mining ventures even more attractive to foreign investors,” John Shearer, president and CEO of GTSO, which is currently working to secure the mining rights to four mineral-rich properties in Mongolia, said to the Business Wire.

Mongolia this year is to start building a link from the Tavan Tolgoi coal basin with an existing rail line north to Russia.

“Tavan Tolgoi is ready to invest US$1.5 billion into 1000-kilometer railway line connecting Tavan Tolgoi to Choibalsan via Sainshand industrial complex,” Kh. Battulga, Minister for Road, Transportation Construction and Urban Development said on April 21 to business-mongolia.com. Mongolian Choibalsan city is already connected to the Russian rail network.

US$10 billion industrial complex in southern city of Sainshand to include a copper smelter, oil refinery, power plants and chemical coking facilities to process the output from both the coal and copper-gold mines.

Feasibility study of the rail-line project is expected to be completed in July 2011, according to the Tavan Tolgoi web site.

While the government has said the railroad will be constructed within two years, some experts said it is more likely to take three to four years.

According to the International Monetary Fund, economic growth may surge to 23 percent in 2013, more than twice the forecast expansion in China, as large mining projects begin production.

Mongolia’s benchmark MSE Top 20 Index is the world’s best performer in the past 12 months and its currency, the tugrik, the fifth-biggest gainer against the dollar.

Agriculture and mining each account for about 20 percent of gross domestic product. Aside from coal and copper, the country also holds oil, potash, iron ore and uranium, as well as rare earths used in electronics, wind turbines and smart bombs.

World Bank data says Mongolian rail network comprises 1,815 kilometers of broad gauge track, of which 1,110 kilometers are on the main line linking Russia to China, 238 kilometers are on a separate network in Eastern Mongolia that has its own link to the Russian railway, and the remaining 477 kilometers are branches from the main line.

The Metsamor nuclear power plant is only 20 miles from Armenia’s capital and most populous Yerevan city. Its location in a seismic zone has drawn renewed attention since Japan’s nuclear crisis, NatGeo magazine said in its article “Is Armenia’s Nuclear Plant the World’s Most Dangerous?”

The power plant Metsamor was built in 1979 and closed in 1989 after an earthquake prompted officials to reconsider the safety of the location.

On December 10, 1988, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck, killing 25,000 people. Some 60 miles from the epicenter, Metsamor, then with two operating reactors, survived the earthquake without damage, according to Armenian officials and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

In 1996, one reactor resumed operations with Western financial assistance for upgrades. Then in 2003, Russia’s state-run power monopoly, Unified Energy System, took over operations in return for Moscow’s cancellation of a US$40 million debt.

Despite the upgrades to the plant, Antonia Wenisch of the Austrian Institute of Applied Ecology in Vienna said that “the overall safety has not improved sufficiently.”

Armenian officials remain confident that their antiquated nuclear power plant can ride out any Japanese-sized tremor. Of course, they have little choice but to believe in its infallibility, The Moscow Times speculates.

Metsamor provides Armenia with more than 40 percent of its energy consumption, and the country has very few alternative energy resources.

Seven years ago, the European Union’s envoy was quoted as calling the facility “a danger to the entire region,” but Armenia later turned down the EU’s offer of a US$289 million loan to finance Metsamor’s shutdown.

Since the EU failed to persuade Armenia to close the plant, it has focused on providing aid for improving its safety, spending more than US$85 million on such projects as well as for renewable energy, and regional energy cooperation efforts.

Armenia has made efforts to obtain other sources of fuel, such as a natural gas pipeline from its southern neighbor Iran, which opened in 2007. But the amount of fuel to be imported remains in question. The conduit poses potential competition to Russia, a country on which Armenia remains highly reliant, for everything from nuclear fuel to grain.

The 3 million people of landlocked Armenia are unique in their energy dependence on one aging nuclear power reactor.

Azerbaijan to the east and Turkey to the west closed their borders with Armenia, cutting off most routes for oil and natural gas.

Armenia has been forced to store spent fuel on-site for 22 years because of a blockade by its two neighbors.

Japan’s recent nuclear disaster is not seen to have a lasting impact on the global nuclear industry, he said.

“We don’t think it’s a big problem for the industry as a whole. It’s a little bit of set-back in time frame, but as a whole it will go on” Gombo said. “We want green development and nuclear is the number one choice.”

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mongolia with its proven uranium reserves of about 80,000 tons ranks 16th in the world in reserves of uranium resources and 6th in the Asian continent following Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, and India.

The country untested reserves may raise the estimate to 1.39 million tons, constituting the largest reserves in the world.

However, currently most of the energy in Mongolia is still generated from coal.

Coal provides 80 percent of its electricity (3 billion kWh in 2009), from less than 1 GWe capacity, and 13 percent of electricity is imported from Russia. Air pollution is a major problem in Ulaanbaatar, from domestic combustion, cars, and power generation.

“We have the ambition to build the capability of nuclear energy in Mongolia, and the ambition to supply nuclear power plants in Northeast Asia with nuclear fuel,” Gombo told reporters on the sidelines of a mining conference in Singapore.

He said the country is seeking investment from around the globe to develop its nuclear energy sector, adding that uranium reserves in the country could rise to above 1 million tons.

“Currently there is not much, but we expect there will be huge investment in Mongolia’s nuclear energy sector, because the super powers are interested,” said Gombo, adding that the United States, Russia and China are competing with each other to get into the country’s nuclear sector.

While Mongolian-Russian joint ventures are currently gaining much attention, sandwiched between China and Russian Mongolia is rightfully diversifying investment partners in its nuclear industry sector to avoid over reliance on any single party.

“The government is quite selective, and is opting to cooperate with the most developed countries in the industry, like the United States, Japan and France,” he said, while adding that it is not like Mongolia doesn’t want to deal with China and Russia, “but we want a balance of interest.”

Meanwhile, Atomredmetzoloto, the mining arm of Russian state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom, says that Russia spent the equivalent of US$600 million on uranium exploration and development in Mongolia to 1995.

In December 2011, Bayarbayasgalan, head of the Nuclear Materials department of the Mongolian Nuclear Energy Agency, told the government-run news agency Montsame that about 20 companies, most of which are international, are now exploring for uranium in Mongolian territory.

According to France’s Areva website, Mongolia and France’s governments signed an agreement to let the company to explore and mine uranium in Mongolia last October.

In September 2009 India also signed a uranium supply and nuclear cooperation agreement with Mongolia. Electricity demand in India is increasing rapidly, and the 830 billion kilowatt hours produced in 2008 was triple the 1990 output, though still represented only some 700 kWh per capita for the year. The country plans to increase its nuclear energy production from 3,667 Mwe to 20,000 Mwe by 2020 and 63,000 Mwe by 2032, which will comprise 25 percent of total electricity production.

The Mongolian government has played a leading role in all nuclear-related efforts. And experts’ considers this trend will continue in the near future.

The new Mongolian Nuclear Energy Law (d/d July 2009), gives government the right to take ownership without payment of not less than 51 percent stake in developments explored with state monies, and not less than 34 percent stake in independently explored sites.

According to Richard Stratford, who directs the State Department’s Nuclear Energy, Safety and Security Office, U.S. Energy Department’s officials and their counterparts in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital, are in the early stages of discussion.

Speaking at the biennial Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference, Stratford said a spent-fuel depot in the region could be of particular value to Taiwan and South Korea, which use nuclear power but have few options when it comes to disposing atomic waste.

“My Taiwan and South Korean colleagues have a really difficult time with spent fuel. And if there really was an international storage depot, which I have always supported, then that would help to solve their problem.”

The United States provides fresh uranium rods to selected trade partners in Asia, including South Korea and Taiwan. For Mongolia to accept and store U.S.-origin spent fuel from these or other nations would require Washington to first negotiate a nuclear trade agreement with Ulaanbaatar.

Although Energy Department officials have reportedly engaged in informal talks with Mongolian representatives for several months, Stratford has not yet had any contact with Ulaanbaatar on the matter, he said. It is not yet certain whether formal negotiations on a nuclear trade pact will move forward.

Energy Department officials traveled to Mongolia last fall for meetings on the matter, according to Mark Hibbs, a senior associate with the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He chaired the discussion on nuclear cooperation.

“It was a fruitful discussion,” Hibbs told GSN yesterday. “They went into some details [but] it was very exploratory.”

Mongolia could seek to step up mining of its natural uranium deposits and potentially expand into a wider array of services, such as providing foreign nations with fresh fuel and then taking back the atomic waste at a later date, nationaljournal.com speculates.

This type of move would come at a time when neither Russia nor China has acted on similar concepts for what is termed “leasing” of nuclear material.

“I think these guys are fooling themselves [if they] believe we will put a spent-fuel depot in Mongolia,” nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis told GSN in a brief interview, noting surprise at Stratford’s remarks. “I don’t think Mongolia is going to accept being a regional spent-fuel repository.”

Mongolia has a long history of uranium exploration commencing with joint Russian and Mongolian endeavors from 1950s involving investment of some US$200 million. Initial success was obtained in Dornod and Gurvanbulag regions of northeastern Mongolia where uranium is present in volcanogenic sediments.

Mongolia joined the IAEA in 1993, though it has applied safeguards under the NPT since 1972. A law on nuclear weapons-free status was passed in 2000. The Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement with IAEA has been in force since May 2003.

The country’s Nuclear Energy Agency has tentative plans for developing nuclear power, using either Korean Smart reactors or Toshiba 4S types, from 2021. Three sites under consideration are Ulaanbaatar, western Mongolia and Dornod province.

According to the Prime Minister S. Batbold, Mongolia plans to commence uranium exploration by the year of 2012 with uranium selling beginning from 2013 or 2014.

“Mongolia has nearly 1 million tons in reasonably assured reserve of uranium and we need to speed up the production,” he said earlier this January.