OREANDA-NEWS. October 11, 2013. Kazakh Prime Minister Serik Akhmetov has attended the opening ceremony of the VIII Eurasian Energy Forum KAZENERGY, where he read a welcome address of the President.

"Kazakhstan is committed to mutually beneficial international cooperation in the energy sphere. One of the principles of the country's further development is the transition from mining to the cooperation in the field of processing of energy resources and the exchange of the latest technology," the President’s welcome address reads.

The Head of State stressed the importance of innovation providing environmental security during field development. The country has developed a sequence of actions to create a national model of progress. The example of this plan of action is the start of production at Kashagan field.

"We have a lot of promising projects. The oil and gas industry, being one of the key sectors of our economy has to ensure technological leadership. I am confident that our joint work and the strength of our partnership will help achieve our goals," the welcome address reads.

On behalf of the Government of Kazakhstan Serik Akhmetov stressed the importance of the forum KAZENERGY. "The energy sector is the backbone of our economy. Over a short period of time, oil production in Kazakhstan grew more than threefold to 80 million tons per year, and gas production increased more than 5 times to more than 40 billion cubic meters," Akhmetov said.

"The launch of the Kashagan project, mentioned by the President in his welcome address, of course, can be seen as a victory of technological progress, benefit of a joint effort of the world’s leading oil and gas companies. But Kazakhstan does not limit itself to this project. Exploration is one of the priorities of the policy of development of the resource and industrial capacity of Kazakhstan," the Prime Minister noted.

"In general, on the instruction of the President, we build all the high-tech chain of use of energy resources from the search for raw materials to the production of goods with high added value. This involves the development of oil refining and petrochemistry, improvement of energy efficiency measures, development of traditional energy sources to the level of "green", use of effective approaches in terms of renewable energy," Akhmetov concluded.