Eurasian Studies

Balkans, Anatolia, Iran, Caucasus and Central Asia Studies Notebooks

Italian Business in Central Asia

In and Around the Energy Sector

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Abstract

While distant and little-known to the Italian public, Central Asia plays an important role for Italy. Kazakhstan is an important supplier of oil to Italy and Italy is the principal customer for Kazakhstani oil. This article concentrates on Italy-Kazakhstan relations because they represent the lion’s share of Italy-Central Asia relations, while also providing a rationale to explain the diverging pathways that allowed Kazakhstan to interact more proficiently with foreign companies, rather than its close neighbours. By focusing on the energy sector, this article also highlights how trans-national companies (TNCs), such as Italy’s Eni, transfer practices from their global experience in oil and gas to their destination countries in Central Asia. In particular, this article analyses the cost-cutting practices of outsourcing services and outstaffing workforce, for which Italian companies and joint ventures have become instrumental.


Open access

Submitted: Aug. 8, 2019 | Published Dec. 16, 2019 | Language: en

Keywords Oil and gas • Turkmenistan • Kazakhstan • Central Asia • Italy • Business

Copyright © 2019 Paolo Sorbello. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-376-2/015


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