Soviet-Chevron Oil-Field Deal Appears Closer : Energy: The Kazakh Republic’s leader says he is removing political obstacles. U.S. officials want him to move faster.

The president of the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan said Monday that he plans to conclude a deal with San Francisco-based Chevron Corp. to develop the huge Tengiz oil fields, but U.S. officials said they are disappointed that he has not moved faster.

“We have full confidence in Chevron,” Kazakh President Nursultan A. Nazarbayev told reporters after meeting with Secretary of State James A. Baker III. “We have been carrying out negotiations with Chevron for over a year now. We’ve analyzed very carefully what Chevron is capable of doing.”

But a U.S. official said Nazarbayev has made no progress since July on removing political obstacles to the agreement.

“He’s going to have to move faster if this is going to happen,” the official said. “At some point, he’s got to fish or cut bait.”

The project is important not only as a pioneer venture in U.S.-Soviet oil cooperation but also as a pilot project in the modernization of Soviet energy production--an industry that will be critical to the country’s ability to earn foreign currency as it attempts to revamp its economy along Western lines.

Earlier this year, Chevron believed that it had a deal with both Soviet authorities and Kazakhstan to develop the Tengiz fields, located on the northeastern shore of the Caspian Sea. Some oil experts believe that the area may contain more petroleum than Alaska’s North Slope.

Under the proposed terms of the deal, which have not been made public, Chevron would get half the production of the fields in exchange for a minority investment of capital and a major injection of expertise.

But after news of the impending deal leaked out, it came under fire in both Moscow and Kazakhstan from communist conservatives and nationalists, who charged that Kazakh natural resources were being turned over to foreign capitalists at an unreasonably low price.

Much of the controversy, however, was over who would control the deal and reap the Soviet share of the profits: the central Soviet government in Moscow or Nazarbayev’s government. Nazarbayev asserts that he is now fully in charge.

“What happened is that political entities during the election campaign in Russia (last spring) began interfering in this deal,” he said. “We are now continuing our negotiations with Chevron. What we’ve done, in order to avoid any kind of controversy, is to invite an independent group of experts to do their own assessment so we can succeed in concluding this deal.”

One U.S. official agrees that Nazarbayev appears to have won the dispute. “I can’t believe that the (central government) is going to try to muscle in on it now,” he said.

But another senior official complained that the Soviet and Kazakh governments have commissioned two separate groups of experts who may produce conflicting conclusions.

Nazarbayev has “got to get hold of this thing and shake it to make it work,” he said.

In a brief statement issued from its San Francisco headquarters, Chevron said: “We certainly acknowledge and welcome the comments made by President Nazarbayev, but at this time we will not speculate about when an agreement will be signed.”

Spokeswoman Bonnie Chaikind said Chevron has been in informal talks with the Soviets and expects “formal talks” to resume soon.

Times staff writer Martha Groves in San Francisco contributed to this story.