Customers buying oil from Kazakhstan are urging the OPEC+ producer to ramp up crude supply and deliver the maximum available volumes, Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov said on Wednesday.
“In light of restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz, our partners are asking us to increase supplies,” Reuters quoted Akkenzhenov as telling reporters in Astana today.
“They are asking for the maximum,” the minister said, but added that “Naturally, we have infrastructure constraints within the limits of Kazakhstan’s current production levels.”
Kazakhstan hasn’t really complied with its OPEC+ production quota in recent years but has vowed continued participation in the group managing oil supply. The country has seen several operational challenges so far this year, beyond the limits of the now largely symbolic OPEC+ quotas which Middle Eastern producers can’t meet anyway with the Strait of Hormuz shut and a significant share of output shut-in because of a lack of enough export outlets.
Kazakhstan’s huge Tengiz field was forced to shut down in January, following a fire at the site that damaged critical power supply. The pace of the ramp-up was slowed due to severe storms in the Black Sea terminal of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which handles most of Kazakhstan’s crude oil exports.
To boost supply to the market clamoring for oil that doesn’t move through the Strait of Hormuz, Kazakhstan plans to use the spare capacity on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline for oil exports from the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
“BTC already exists, and it would not be logical not to use it. Today, BTC is one of the key routes for Kazakhstan,” minister Akkenzhenov said earlier this month.
Moreover, Kazakhstan’s supply will be further boosted this summer after the North Caspian Operating Company, the operator of the giant Kashagan oilfield, announced last week that the planned field maintenance would be pushed back by a year to 2027.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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