Importancia de las actitudes hacia la ciencia.

It is a fact that the Kazakhization of the NOC took place. However, the present situation should not be seen solely as an outcome of a well orchestrated tacit strategy but also – if not primarily – as result of a long-term process that accompanied the development of the Kazakh oil industry after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For instance, the fact that the Kazakh government had wanted to turn the NOC into a modern capitalist enterprise 324 _{Interview with a high-ranking specialist of a major foreign oil company: Almaty 6 October 2004;}

Interview with a director working for a major foreign sub-contracting company: Almaty 11 October 2004.

325_{Interview with a vice-president of a major sub-contracting company that specialises in the oil and gas}

sector: Almaty 19 October 2004.

326_{Interview with a KazMunaiGas director (Exploration and Production): Almaty 6 October 2004.}

327_{Interview with a local specialist working for the foreign embassy: Almaty 27 September 2004; Interview}

with a general director of a local oil company: Atyrau 12 November 2004.

328

Interview with a high-ranking specialist of a major foreign oil company: Almaty 6 October 2004; Interview with a director working for a major foreign sub-contracting company: Almaty 11 October 2004.

implied that Soviet era bureaucrats would be either forced into retirement or pushed to lower positions, if not laid off.330It was only ‘natural’ that in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, the young managers – allegedly accustomed to capitalism – have been recruited from among ethnic Kazakhs rather than non-Kazakhs. Arguably, the same pattern repeated itself with the lower-level employees of KazMunaiGas. In the case of the non-Kazakh specialists, the situation is even more complicated. We argue that Russians and other Slavs were not pushed from the NOC in order to ‘purify’ the company, but rather had been leaving state run oil industries throughout the 1990s for jobs in other sectors which at the time seemed more promising. Initially, only few found positions in private oil companies, whether local or foreign. Hence, the de-Russification of the technical ranks initially took place independently of the regime’s Kazakhization strategy.

As stated in the previous section, at the beginning of the 1990s the Kazakh government’s number one objective was to attract as many foreign oil companies as possible, which were seen as crucial for the development of the Kazakh oil sector. This trend had negative effects on the oil supporting industries as well as on the oil industry itself. For instance, geological research was brought to a standstill. Specialists employed in the institutes across Kazakhstan were left without much choice but to go and seek employment outside their professions.331 In the most extreme cases, they worked in the local bazaars or turned taxi drivers.332 The same situation occurred in the case of oil drilling specialists: ‘In the beginning of the 1990s, the government said that now we are going to work on the fields that were discovered in the past and that for the years to come there will not be any drilling in Kazakhstan. What were we supposed to do?’333

In other instances, the specialists working in a design institute found themselves out of work because the bosses of the institutes drove them into bankruptcy. In the beginning of the 1990s, a director of an institute would establish a private business, the nominal owner of which was a relative or a friend. The director would then use the institute’s space, equipment, as well as workforce to work on projects that he had 330

Ibid.

331_{For instance, in the mid-1990s the staff strength of a major design institute in Atyrau was reduced from}

400 to 250.Source: Interview with vice-director of a design institute: Atyrau 25 November 2004.

332_{Interview with a technical director of a company which specializes in supplying high-tech technology to}

the oil and gas sector: Almaty 27 September 2004; Interview with a director working for a major foreign sub-contracting company: Almaty 11 October 2004.

managed to obtain for his company. Moreover, as starting capital, a director diverted institute funds as short-term loans to his company: loans that the director’s company never repaid. In a short while such institutes, stripped of their assets, found themselves on the verge of collapse and the staff was simply laid off.334

It was stated that the situation for geologists, designers, and drilling specialists began to improve from 2001–2002 onwards. The single most important contributing factor was the buoyant world oil prices in the early 2000s that led to the creation (and in

some instances revitalization) of various mid-sized companies335 that were keen on

gaining access to the oil industry336 (discussed further in the next section). One of the major problems that the new companies faced was a lack of trained specialists with sufficient experience who would be able to supervise complex projects; hence people who for a great part of the 1990s were out of a job become eagerly-sought assets almost overnight. A technical director stated that about 80 per cent of his colleagues that used to work with him in a design institute now worked for private companies.337 The position of the specialists was further strengthened when it emerged that throughout the 1990s, Kazakhstan not only failed to educate a new generation of professionals,338 but the ones that it actually did educate needed thorough retraining.339 Consequently a number of interviewees spoke about a lost decade or ten-year gap.340

334_{Interview with a director of company that specializes in designing and building gas stations: Almaty 29}

September 2004; Interview with a director working for a major foreign sub-contracting company: Almaty 11 October 2004.

335_{‘Ai-Dan Ltd. To the Single Aim,’Petroleum MagazineMay 2000, ‘Kazneftegasmash: A Reliable}

Partner of Oilmen,’Petroleum Magazine, October 2004.

336_{Another important factor contributing to the speed development of the oil supporting companies was the}

local content policy (chapter 5).

337

Interview with a technical director of a company which specializes in supplying high-tech technology to the oil and gas sector: Almaty 27 September 2004.

338 _{In Kazakhstan, as in all others post-Soviet, socialist countries, law and economics become the most}

popular degrees, whereas the technical universities, the former bastions of education, were deserted.See also: Daulet Duisenbekov; Jochen Tholen and Ken Roberts, July 2002.

339_{The education of future engineers became one of the government’s priorities at around 2000–2001.For}

more see: ‘Education According to the 21st Century,’ Petroleum Magazine, October, 2002; ‘Centre for Education and Science,’Petroleum Magazine, May 2000.

340_{Interview with a deputy director of a designing institute: Almaty 23 September 2004; Interview with a}

commercial director of a designing institute: Almaty 23 September 2004; Interview with an area manager of one the world wide major drilling companies: Almaty 04 October 2004; Interview with a director of a medium-sized subcontracting company: Atyrau 15 November 2004; Interview with a general director of a local oil company: Atyrau 12 November 2004; Interview with general manager working for a foreign building sub-contracting company: Almaty 11 October 2004.

The aforementioned KazMunaiGas directors, in a similar fashion to other interviewees, spoke during the interviews about the issue of specialists in Kazakhstan; however, with two major differences. Whereas for companies aiming to get into the oil industry, the most urgent problem was to find and employ as many Soviet-era specialists as possible – irrespective of their ethnicity341 – the directors instead placed a stress on training the younger generation – that is to say, ethnic Kazakhs. Moreover, according to them, there were enough top-level specialists from the Soviet era working in

KazMunaiGas already – a view not shared by a number of other interviewees342 – and

they could cope with workloads without any major problems.343This statement indirectly implies that KMG is not interested in hiring non–Kazakh specialists. Given the secrecy of KMG, it is virtually impossible to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that this is the case; however, some evidence supports this claim. One of the interviewees – an ethnic Russian whose life history does not divert from that of other KMG directors – was told that he could not be employed by KMG because he did not speak English;344needless to say, none of the other KMG directors spoke English either.

In addition, two specialists that worked for foreign companies spoke about situations in which, during meetings with KMG concerning technical matters, the company was represented by a manager (ethnic Kazakh) who was accompanied by a group of specialists that was employed from outside of the NOC. The group of specialists – predominantly made up of ethnic Russians (however, not exclusively) – were people who actually knew ‘what they were taking about’, whereas the manager played the role of a guardian. According to both interviewees, a situation in which KMG sub-contracts

341

Interview with a deputy director of a designing institute: Almaty 23 September 2004; Interview with a commercial director of a designing institute: Almaty 23 September 2004; Interview with a director of an engineering and designing company: Almaty 27 September 2004; Interview with a vice-president of a company that specializes in geographical services: Almaty 28 September 2004.

342

Interview with a high-ranking specialist of a major foreign oil company: Almaty 6 October 2004; Interview with a director working for a major foreign sub-contracting company: Almaty 11 October 2004; Interview with a regional manager of one of a major foreign sub-contracting company: Atyrau 10 November 2004.

343

Interviews with KazMunaiGas’ directors: Astana 11 December 2004; Astana 6 December 2004; Almaty 6 October 2004; Almaty 4 November 2004.

specialists from outside of the KMG (non-Kazakh) rather than employing them on a permanent basis was self-explanatory345.

The policy of not hiring or rehiring Russian and other non-Kazakh era specialists to work in KMG is perfectly in line with the Kazakhization of the NOC, and as such is not in any way surprising. However, what is special about this situation is the fact that people who do not get hired are not just ordinary Russians and other Slavs, but those who used to directly or indirectly run industries or head institutes; in other words, they had been in the first row. In post-Soviet Kazakhstan, the axis turned one hundred eighty degrees, and those who used to be in a second row and those in the oil-rich peripheries in the third row are now in the first one. The special place that the directors and others like them (real experts) hold in a new company is further highlighted by the fact that the new young professionals – ‘political appointees’ – are not engineers by training, but rather lawyers and economists who do not know anything about the oil sector. During the interviews, the directors spoke rather dismissively about these young professionals, who only do a bureaucratic job and who have never seen an oilfield in their lives.346 It is argued here that the special position that the oil men – the regime’s clients – held in the NOC reinforces their bond with the regime, and especially with Nazarbayev. While there is no tangible evidence to even suggest that not employing non-Kazakh specialists was the regime’s official policy in order to please its clients, it is certainly the result.

The repercussions of this unintentional outcome – which came about as a result of the Kazakhization of the oil industry – can be only fully understood and appreciated if we take under consideration the importance that working in the top levels of the state-owned enterprises had in the Soviet Union. The clout that it once had not only included better housing conditions and access to goods that were outside the reach of an average person, but crucially meant immeasurable prestige and respect within one’s community – something that ethnic Kazakhs were overwhelmingly denied and arguably had been longing for. Hence, it is not surprising that during the interviews, the directors were very keen on stressing the special place that the NOC plays in building new independent 345 _{Interview with a high-ranking specialist of a major foreign oil company: Almaty 6 October 2004;}

Interview with business development manager working for major foreign subcontracting company in Kazakhstan: Almaty 14 October 2004.

346

Interviews with KazMunaiGas’ directors: Astana 11 December 2004; Astana 6 December 2004; Almaty 6 October 2004; Almaty 4 November 2004.

Kazakhstan, for which – as one of them put it – ‘my ancestors fought with sword and fire’.347

As a result of this, Nazarbayev, from the point of view of the oil men and other ethnic Kazakh specialists, is not just a patron who assures their well being, but is also someone who ended decades of living in the shadows of Russians and other non-

Kazakhs.348 Arguably, this puts Nazarbayev on an equal footing with Dinmukhamed

Kunaev (chapter 1, section 2), who ruled the Kazakhstan SRR from 1964 until 1986, and who is held responsible for actively promoting the Kazakh ethnic elite to the key posts across the republic. It was stated that thanks to Kunaev, by the 1980s the Kazakhstan SSR had developed ‘a genuine Kazakh infrastructure, in which Kazakhs held many of the important jobs, especially in party politics, the republic’s government, and agriculture and in the cultural networks and educational systems’ (Olcott 1997: 205). Arguably, then, Nazarbayev is – not always intentionally – finishing what Kunaev began during the Soviet years.