President Vladimir Putin was in Kazakhstan yesterday and he and President Nazarbayev will be traveling to Turkmenistan this week together. Two issues are on the agenda. First, Russia will be assisting Kazakhstan in enriching uranium for its nuclear energy power center. The two countries will be setting up a joint-uranium enrichment center. It looks like Kazakhstan will provide the uranium and Russia will provide the enrichment center at Angarsk (under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Commission), and that the goal is to sell the uranium to other countries. Russia had previously offered to enrich uranium for Iran as part of a compromise to allow Iran to continue its nuclear energy program. While the offer fell through, the fact that Russia’s offer was accepted by the US and other nations means that Russia is generally trusted in the area of enrichment, so it seems like this might be a good move for Kazakhstan, to let experienced Russian scientists handle enrichment, while hopefully at the same time, building their own capacity slowly: by learning how to do it from the Russians and by sending their students to the US and other leading nuclear engineering countries. Nothing too controversial here.

The second purpose of the visit may ruffle some feathers in Washington and elsewhere however. Hint: It involves oil (more…)