Kazakhstan will reroute some of the oil from at its giant Kashagan oilfield toward China after a Ukrainian drone attack on an export terminal on Russia’s Black Sea reduced loadings of Kazakh crude.
At the end of November, a Ukrainian attack damaged infrastructure at the loading terminal of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) at the port of Novorossiysk on Russia’s Black Sea coast.
CPC operates the pipeline from the Caspian coast in northwest Kazakhstan to the Novorossiysk port, which handles 80% of Kazakhstan’s crude exports from giant oilfields in Kazakhstan operated by international oil firms.
Affiliates of Chevron and ExxonMobil are also minority shareholders in CPC, with the Russian Federation as its largest shareholder with a 24% stake.
In view of urgent repairs at one of three single point moorings and deferred loadings, Kazakhstan works on rerouting part of its crude exports, Kazakhstan’s Energy Ministry told Reuters on Wednesday.
Although the attack did not halt all shipments, Kazakhstan is working to reshuffle exports until the terminal is operating at normal capacity again.
“Currently, the Ministry, together with shippers, is carrying out urgent work to redistribute oil volumes,” the Energy Ministry told Reuters.
“Measures have also been taken to redirect a certain volume of Kashagan oil to China,” it added.
Kazakhstan is also diverting more of its westbound exports to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline to the Turkish Mediterranean coast after the attack at the CPC terminal on the Black Sea, multiple industry sources told Reuters last week.
The Kashagan field is located in the North Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan and is one of the biggest oil discoveries globally of the past 50 years. The oilfield has approximately 35 billion barrels of oil in place, of which nearly half are estimated to be recoverable.
The Kashagan oilfield is being developed by the North Caspian Project consortium of international majors and Kazakhstan’s state oil firm KazMunayGas. The shareholders in the consortium include KazMunayGas, Eni, Shell, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, China’s CNPC, and Japan’s INPEX Ltd.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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