Dear Participants of the Congress!
Ladies and Gentlemen!

At our previous meeting in Madrid, all the business and energy community was full of optimism, and experts were full of euphoria concerning the further prospects of development of economy, the markets and fuel industry.

The 20th World Petroleum Congress is held at a completely different time when the world is desperately striving to find the ways to overcome the mistrust to the leading currencies and the threat of another global economic recession.
 
This reminds us of the fact that oil, well-known as “black gold”, has the value which eventually tends to grow regardless of sporadic fluctuations in the market. The natural mineral resources are far more reliable than volatile foreign-exchange holdings.

On the other side oil, or speaking broadly the fuel commodities, is the source of energy for development of the real sector of economy, for development and use of new technologies, innovations, equipment and investments. And these are the things that set up the basis of progress of global economy and create new industries, new sources of demand and supply.
 
Fuel consumption covers 90% of global energy supply and more than 80% of its production is done from traditional sources. These are the parameters to define the current status of petroleum industry and prospects for its growing role for the global progress.

Modern economic, energy and environmental situation impacts the development of the energy supply system towards increased share of sources with high heat efficiency, market mobility and low contamination factor. This is especially true for those parts of the world which have increased demand for the low-carbon environmentally friendly energy. Oil and gas and their products are the adequate response to the needs of the world in energy sources in the XXI century.

Another feature which is characterizing the transformations in the oil sector is the development of technologies. It allows to expand the resource base through development of hardly accessible reserves, to improve the quality of manufactured fuel petrochemical commodities, through improved energy saving at production and consumption levels. And also improved efficiency of use of renewable sources of energy as the factor of long-term transformations in fuel sector and in the global energy supply system.
 
Finding solutions to these challenges embraces a wide scope of participants from the real sector of economy – from the extractive to the high-tech sectors. This is why a large-scale investment and innovative activity inspired by the energy sector is a powerful alternative to the threat of the economic downturn and recession.

These are the ideas that we are implementing in our country and the center of technical and business modernization is the National Welfare Fund “Samruk-Kazyna” which controls 70% of the national economy of Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan enjoying more than three percent of the global reserves of oil will in the near future enter the list of its ten leading global suppliers. However alongside with this “Samruk-Kazyna” has initiated projects contributing to a large-scale development of petrochemicals and petroleum machinery building industries thanks to which Kazakhstan will become in the mid of this decade a center of new high-tech products for the global market.

I am confident that this forum will be a source appearance of new ideas and approaches being adequate to modern challenges. The Congress in Doha is an important part of this international dialogue. We will continue the dialogue at the next meeting of the World Petroleum Congress in the capital of Kazakhstan – Astana – during the traditional Eurasian Energy Forum of KAZENERGY conducted by the Association which I am honored to head. I wish all the best to the participants of the 20th Congress and see you next year in Astana!