A poor civil rights track record likely won’t drive investors or Alberta companies away from the oil-rich country of Kazakhstan, said a Calgary-based oil industry analyst.

Despite allegations of torture and other human rights abuses by both the United Nations and Amnesty International, the Central Asian country remains attractive as an investment target and has been recognized for moving towards Western-style democracy, said Peters & Co. vice-chairman Wilf Gobert.

“If you really want to micro-analyse problems with civil rights abuses, you would seriously have to attack virtually every major oil-exporting country in the world, other than maybe the U.K. and Norway. Some would even say ‘don’t exclude Canada because we have our own abuses’,” added Gobert.

“The reality is that Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela and Indonesia are all countries that have major civil rights and civil liberties issues. Kazakhstan by comparison certainly wouldn’t rank at the bottom.”

Gobert was one of more than 300 participants at the Canada Eurasia Energy and Industry Alliance (CEEIA) conference held recently in Calgary, at which Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev drummed up his country’s economic and development potential during his first presidential visit to Canada. Nazarbayev and his team of senior ministers are seeking about $70 billion US worth of foreign investment over the next dozen years.

Security was tight at the one-day conference held at the downtown Hyatt, and later at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), where Nazarbayev accepted an honorary degree in applied technology for helping develop his country’s energy industry.

Local officials were criticized for “white-hatting” the controversial leader during his visit to Calgary, but David Kilgour, federal Secretary of State for Asia and the Pacific, told the conference that Kazakhstan has significantly transformed its political and economic institutions since achieving independence in 1991.

Canada is now Kazakhstan’s fourth-largest foreign investor, pumping $2 billion into the country as of last year.

Only days before the conference, federal officials signed an action plan to deepen the economic partnership between the two countries, and Canada plans to send a business delegation to Kazakhstan later this year.

Gobert noted that authorities such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have classified Kazakhstan – on track to produce 180 million tonnes of oil by 2015 through a new offshore development program – as the most successful country of the former Soviet Union in economic development.

“Is it perfect? Absolutely not,” said Gobert. “But by comparison to Sudan, this is way up the scale.”

Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby, co-chair of the Toronto-based Human Rights Watch, said Kazakhstan is starting to look like another case study in how oil windfalls bolster dictatorships rather than foster democracy.

Human Rights Watch says the Kazakh government has led a crackdown on opposition political parties, the media and certain non-governmental organizations in a drive to limit political competition.

“The trend is clear – the Kazakh government wants to avoid genuine political competition so that it cannot be held accountable to the public,” said Ruby.

“In the wake of an oil boom, it looks like the benefits are concentrated in the hands of a few who are more than willing to crack down on the rest.”

During his visit to Calgary, Nazarbayev said his country intends to expand its oil production from current levels of one million barrels per day to 3.5 million bpd by 2015 through a new offshore development program in Kazakhstan’s section of the Caspian Sea.

The investment capacity on the fields in the Caspian shelf alone have been estimated at $200 billion.

He added that it was a matter of “prime importance” to strengthen Kazakhstan’s market economy and create a democratic political system, “despite the fact there is no theory or methodology to transform a socialist system into a capitalist one.” He also stressed that he was committed to the “sanctity” of property rights.

Alberta’s biggest private- sector investor in Kazakhstan is independent oil company PetroKazakhstan Inc., formerly known as Hurricane Hydrocarbons. PetroKazakhstan has been operating for six years in Kazakhstan and is now its second-largest foreign oil producer and the largest supplier of refined oil products.

“We believe there is a tremendous potential in the conventional onshore industry in Kazakhstan and that it can contribute to the economic development of the country and of its oil equipment and service industry,” said company president and CEO Bernard Isautier.

Isautier was diplomatic when asked by reporters about Kazakhstan’s human rights record. “I am not a politician, I am a businessman,” he replied.

During the conference, PetroKazakhstan announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Russia-based LUKoil, a major shareholder in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) in Central Asia. The deal will allow PetroKazakhstan to eventually ship about 16,000 bpd of oil through the pipeline.