By empty (11/11/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Top Gazprom managers said on Friday they planned to set up a joint venture with Kazakhstan by the end of this year to process gas from the Central Asian state\'s mammoth Karachaganak field in Russia. Earlier this year the Kazakh government gave up plans of building its own processing plant at the field and accepted Gazprom\'s offer to process gas in nearby Orenburg across the Russian border. \"We talked about the Orenburg gas processing plant where a joint venture will be set up,\" Gazprom Chief Executive Alexei Miller told reporters after meeting Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

By empty (11/11/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Businessman Mirgadzhi Guseinov, head of a regional branch of the All-Russia Azeri Congress, an association of ethnic Azeri organizations in Russia, was murdered outside his apartment block in Astrakhan on Friday, the Astrakhan prosecutor\'s office told Interfax. Set up in 2001, the Congress, the brainchild of former Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev, brought together Azeri organizations that already existed in Russia. (Interfax).

By empty (11/10/2005 issue of the CACI Analyst)

Uzbek businessmen say the country\'s oil shortages will continue to worsen unless the government gives up its monopoly control over the oil industry. Most of the country is already short of petrol. Recent rises in world oil prices may be bringing Uzbekistan\'s oil problem to a crisis.