The Taliban-led administration in Afghanistan on Thursday signed its first international contract to extract oil from the northern Amu Darya basin as the group seeks to increase revenue.
The agreement with a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corp (中國石油天然氣集團), was inked in Kabul in the presence of Chinese Ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu (王愚) and the Taliban’s Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
The pact would “strengthen Afghanistan’s economy and increase its level of oil independence,” Baradar said at the signing.
Wang, whose country does not recognize the Taliban government, said that the 25-year contract would support Afghanistan’s push for self-sufficiency.
Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas Co (疆中亞石油天然氣) would invest as much as US$150 million in the first year and US$540 million over the subsequent three years to explore five oil and gas blocks, said Shahabuddin Delawar, the Taliban’s acting minister of mines and petroleum.
The blocks are in a 4,500km2 area in northern Afghanistan.
The militant group would earn 15 percent royalty fees from the 25-year contract.
Daily oil production would start at about 200 tonnes and gradually rise to about 1,000 tonnes. The five blocks are estimated to hold 87 million barrels of crude oil, a previous survey showed.
Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas would also build Afghanistan’s first crude oil refinery, Delawar said.
If it failed to meet all the contract obligations within a year, the contract would be terminated, he said.
China National Petroleum was awarded the same projects in 2011 by the previous government, but the deal was scrapped years later by then-Afghan president Ashraf Ghani due to delays and lack of progress in work.
The Taliban has regarded the restart of this project as significant as so far investments have been from private or individual entrepreneurs, said Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK.
“This contract is clearly quite significant for the cash-strapped Taliban, because they’ve been desperate for this kind of investment,” Pantucci said. “Strategically, this isn’t going to be a game changing oil commitment for China, as it’s a relatively limited opportunity.”
The Taliban has harbored hopes that China would boost investments in the country’s rich resources, estimated to be worth US$1 trillion.
The group sees the investments as a way to fix an economy that has nearly collapsed after international aid, accounting for 40 percent of the nation’s GDP, was halted following the chaotic withdrawal of US troops in 2021.
However, attacks by the Islamic State group in Afghanistan, such as the one that targeted Chinese businesspeople and executives in a hotel last month, have made China wary about investing.
Then there is also the presence of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, a Xinjiang-based separatist group, that has kept Beijing cautious.
Before China National Petroleum came into the picture, Metallurgical Corp of China Ltd (中國冶金科工) won almost a US$3 billion bid in 2008 to mine one of Afghanistan’s largest copper deposits in Logar Province, but it never made headway due to a series of delays mostly to do with security concerns.
The Taliban says that it is renegotiating the contract.
The Taliban has repeatedly asked international companies to invest in Afghanistan’s natural resources, even though it has drawn widespread international condemnation for its rules barring women from education and jobs.
China has consistently said it would never interfere in the country’s affairs.
Although no nation has officially recognized the Taliban government, China, Russia and Pakistan have maintained close political and economic ties.
Afghanistan consumes about 1.3 million tonnes of fuel annually, imported mostly from Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day