Gradually all is coming back to where it was before. A huge number of small and medium business players have closed their doors for clients, and those who succeeded in benefiting from the situation at the right and appropriate time, on the contrary, have just stepped on their own commercial path. And only the big oil business, as our big turtle slowly sailing with Kazakhstan on its back through the ocean of global economy, may seem to be unshakable to an outside observer. But is it really so? Have there been any changes to the positions of the leaders in production and sale of black gold?

How did you form your opinion about the candidates?	%
From mass media	25
Based on my personal experience with the company	40
Based on references from clients and partners	25
Based on its reputation in society	35
Other	0
What influenced your choice?	%
Success of the company	35
Brand awareness	20
Reputation of its manager	15
Frequency of references in mass media	0
Other	0

In order to find out who is most likable in the world we again used an old and incredibly exciting method (with results sometimes turning out to be absolutely unexpected), namely preparing questionnaires and ratings. It is sad that the number of people willing or able to find a few minutes for completing little questionnaires becomes less. This year we received only 235 responses. But they are most important to us and our editorial staff sincerely thanks everyone who showed his consciousness and who is not indifferent to the future of independent surveys.

Of course, the oil industry is very specific and not every average manager, who formed the majority of our respondents, knows all details and peculiarities of the “big turtle”. But nevertheless they have expressed their personal view, which has a legal right to exist, and gave us new things to think about. For example, besides getting a clear picture of ten leaders, we found out that many subsidiaries are going step for step with their parent companies and sometimes have a reputation which is significantly higher than that of their “mothers”. Or that the “faces” of our oil business continue to be unreachable for common public, as well as the information about financial data of the companies headed by them.

This year in addition to traditional questions we decided to determine who in our country is considered to be the most recognizable, powerful and promising oilman. Here the situation was quite uncommon. More than 53% of the respondents had difficulties in answering these questions. The rest of them, in addition to the names that we were quite ready to hear, mentioned such persons as Nursultan Nazarbayev, Imangali Tasmagambetov, Kanat Bozumbayev…This brings up the question: either our respondents do not know our oilmen by sight, or, vice versa, they know more than some undisclosed “oil barons” would like them to. Timur Kulibayev became the leader in all three positions. Besides him the following persons were mentioned: Nurlan Balgimbayev, Kairgeldy Kabyldin, Serik Burkitbayev, Zhak Marabayev, Askar Balzhanov, etc.

This year KazMunaiGaz again did not give up to anyone, having got more than 90% of the votes, though the average grades of this golden winner are not the best ones, and by its transparency level it got a low score (among ten leaders), having given up the title of the most closed company to Mangistaumunaigaz. The same KazMunaiGaz got the highest score for availability of a recognizable image.

Next comes Tengizchevroil with 63% of the votes, which got the best scores almost by all criteria. The highest average score for all criteria was got by KPO, which was ranked third.

For their high qualification and professionalism the maximum scores were awarded to the management of Chevron, KPO and Shell. The best conditions for personnel are again provided by KPO. The highest social responsibility (a new criterion that we introduced from this year) is demonstrated by Shell. Mangistaumunaigaz turned out to be most unattractive for investors. This year they mentioned a little bit more local companies, than foreign ones. Though it is not always clear if such companies are purely local or not. The positions of Russian LUKOIL, being one of the long-standing companies in our rating, have dropped and this year it was not ranked among the first ten. Chinese oilmen and Kazakhstan-Chinese joint ventures firmly stay in their positions. Experts give a high estimation to the management level (probably owing to their growing presence in the market), and at the same time point out an extremely low level of transparency (the lowest score among all mentioned companies (1.56) was got by PetroChina). Our attempts to contact managers of CNPC (for example) were doomed to failure due to …. the absence of Russian-speaking secretaries. Probably, by virtue of their increasing influence the management of those companies does not deem it necessary to keep the personnel speaking in the language of the country of their operations.

In 35% of cases the opinions of our respondents were influenced by a company’s success and in 20% – by brand awareness. And that’s what the management needs to think about when abolishing their advertisement, marketing and PR departments that work on building a required company image and ensuring references to and recognizability of the company on the whole and of its top-management in particular. However many may think that as opposed to banks or insurance organizations the oil companies do not need to steep into spreading their popularity, since they have a completely different “public” to address.

#	Company name	Percentage of references	Average score	Management qualification and reputation	Success in Kazakhstan market	Level of social responsibility	Availability of recognizable image	Attractiveness for investors	Transparency level	Ability to create conditions for personnel	Ability to operate in crisis conditions
1	KazMunaiGaz	90.91	3.50	3.56	4.2	3.1	4.8	3.33	2.22	3.11	3.65
2	Tengizchevroil	63.64	4.23	4.57	4.71	3.86	4.57	4.29	3.71	4.29	3.86
3	Karachaganak Petroleum Operating B.V.	55.56	4.59	5	4.87	4.25	4.21	4.45	4.45	4.65	4.81
4	PetroKazakhstan	46.5	3.58	3.5	3.98	3.33	3.78	3.33	3.67	3.54	3.5
5	Mangistaumunaigaz	34.45	3.03	2.67	3.67	2.67	2.67	3.45	2.33	3.45	3.33
6	Shell	33.64	4.55	5	4.26	4.56	4.45	4.31	4.5	4.78	4.5
7	Chevron	27.76	4.15	5	4.68	4.5	3.46	4.12	3.5	← Return to news list