June 2013: Workers from the Bolashak oil plant near Atyrau in Kazakhstan await the arrival of British Prime Minister David Cameron and Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Photo: Leon Neal/PA Archive/PA Images. All rights reserved.
A review of Oleg Chervinsky’s The Black Blood of Kazakhstan: The Oil History of Independence (Chornaya Krov’ Kazakhstana: Neftyanaya Istoriya Nezavisizmosti) Soz & DS, Almaty, 2017.
When speaking about Kazakhstan, you have to mention oil. This is the sector that has shaped the country’s political economy since independence. And oil is precisely where this book, the first and only overview of the evolution of Kazakhstan’s oil industry to date, begins. As the author explains: the book’s title symbolises oil as the blood that flows through Kazakhstan’s financial veins. Indeed, with his 325-page summary of the main milestones in Kazakhstan’s oil history, Oleg Chervinsky, a veteran oil journalist, delivers a comprehensive overview of the sector to date.
