Kazakhstan is looking to re-route part of its crude oil exports away from its Black Sea export terminal and on pipelines through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey amid continued threats to its shipments from the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
“Transportation through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan system, shipments across the Caspian Sea through the territory of Azerbaijan, as well as the Baku-Supsa route are being considered,” the Kazakh Ministry of Energy said on Monday, as carried by local media.
Kazakhstan is working on re-routes for seaborne shipments and boosting supply eastward via pipeline to China, the ministry said, as the country’s crude oil exports have been severely disrupted in recent weeks due to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s oil export infrastructure.
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In July alone, flows through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) were suspended for days as many as on three separate occasions.
The Ukrainian drone attacks have led to suspension of the shipments and exposed Kazakhstan’s critical infrastructure vulnerability of having to rely on a Russian export terminal for most of its crude oil shipments.
CPC operates the pipeline from the Caspian coast in northwest Kazakhstan to the Novorossiysk port, which handles most of Kazakhstan’s crude exports from giant oilfields in Kazakhstan operated by international oil firms, including U.S. supermajor Chevron. CPC transports crude oil from three major fields in Kazakhstan, Tengiz, Kashagan, and Karachaganak, in which major western companies have stakes, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Eni.
Affiliates of Chevron and ExxonMobil are also minority shareholders in CPC, with the Russian Federation as its largest shareholder with a 24% stake.
However, the Ukrainian forces have been targeting Russian energy infrastructure for months now, with CPC also among the targets on more than one occasion. The latest week-long shutdown briefly removed more than 1 million bpd of Kazakh production from the market, adding another supply risk as global oil flows remain under pressure from disruptions affecting both the Black Sea and Middle East shipping routes.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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