The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) is expected to complete the repairs at one of the mooring points at its Black Sea oil export terminal within three days, Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov said on Thursday, in what could soon mark an increase in Kazakh oil shipments.
Kazakhstan’s oil production and exports have been lower in recent months due to a partial outage at the huge Kashagan oilfield due to a gas leak and urgent repairs needed at two of the CPC’s terminals on the Black Sea.
The 1,500-km CPC pipeline from the giant Kazakh oilfields in the Caspian Sea to Novorossiysk, on the Russian Black Sea coast, moves over two-thirds of all Kazakhstan export oil along with crude from Russian fields, including those in the Caspian region.
Oil exports from Kazakhstan via the Black Sea terminal were expected to face at least a month of reduced shipments and disrupted loading schedules due to urgent repairs needed at two of the terminal’s three Single Point Moorings, the consortium said at the end of August.
Earlier indications were that all three Single Point Moorings would resume operations before the middle of October.
Kashagan, on the other hand, was expected to resume production at a level of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of October.
“Production at Kashagan has been curtailed due to some ‘nuances’ with the equipment. We are conducting repair work,” Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Bolat Akchulakov told Reuters in the middle of October.
The offshore oilfield Kashagan is one of the world’s biggest oilfields in terms of capacity to pump crude oil.
On November 6, Kazakhstan’s daily production of crude oil and condensates jumped after Kashagan restored production.
Kazakhstan’s Prime Minister Smailov said today, as quoted by Reuters, that the country plans to reduce its export dependence on the CPC, which crosses Russia, and to ship more oil via the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
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By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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