The oilfield that changed Kazakhstan

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the wake of the USSR breaking up, Kazakhstan was wrestling with the challenges of independence; hyperinflation, the economy collapsing and food shortages. But three-and-a-half kilometres underground on the north-east shore of the Caspian Sea, a giant financial opportunity was lying dormant – The Tengiz Oil Field. Less than two years after gaining sovereignty, the government signed the “deal of the century”. The state partnered with American company Chevron and started drilling to access the estimated 25 billion barrels of oil in the ground. Tengiz is the sixth largest oilfield in the world, and its resources would change Kazakhstan from a fledgling state, to one of the largest oil producers in the world. Johnny I’Anson speaks to Bruce Pannier, a news correspondent in Central Asia for over 30 years, who saw first-hand the chaos of independence and the growth of wealth in the country. (Picture: Tengiz Oil Field. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Johnny
0:08.6	Iansson.
0:09.6	We're going back to 1993 in the wake of the collapse of the USSR.
0:14.2	Amongst the turmoil, a company would emerge which would change the fortunes of Kazakhstan
0:18.9	and make it an oil superpower.
0:24.7	The Russian Parliament has become the setting for what could be democracy's last stand
0:29.3	in Moscow.
0:30.3	A spokesman for Boris Yeltsin said in Moscow tonight that the Soviet Union would officially
0:34.9	cease to exist on December 31st.
0:37.9	I arrived in Kazakhstan in March 1992.
0:40.9	There was a great deal of excitement among the population.
0:43.2	I mean, it was independent.
0:44.3	But at the same time, the system that they've grown up was just falling apart.
0:48.3	And so there was a great deal of confusion about what was going on.
0:51.6	So there was a lot of fear about what tomorrow would be like.
0:55.1	Because tomorrow was unlikely to be better than today was.
0:58.1	As a Soviet Union broke up, Kazakhstan, like the rest, was a heady mix of panic, excitement
1:03.6	and chaos.
1:05.0	Bruce Peneer is a correspondent of over 30 years in Central Asia and lived for years in Kazakhstan
1:10.5	in the aftermath of independence.
1:12.8	He was part of a sociological research project led by the University of Manchester in the
1:17.3	UK and saw firsthand the economy collapsing, food shortages and rampant inflation.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.