Kazakhstan defines alternative routes for oil exports bypassing CPC

Kazakhstan already has alternative routes for the export of 16.5 million tons of oil, Energy Minister Bolat Akchulakov said, Report informs referring to the Kazakh media.

He was speaking in the parliament about how much oil Kazakhstan can export bypassing the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).

This volume of oil can be exported through the Atyrau-Samara pipeline, as well as in the direction of China. “Nevertheless, this is not enough, 54 million tons are difficult to distribute,” he said.

Meanwhile, during a plenary session in the parliament, MP Aikyn Konurov said that the current oil export model is unacceptable from the point of view of Kazakh economic sovereignty.

“Behind the accident at the CPC, one should see not just a technical incident, but the inferiority of the entire structure of the strategic oil and gas sector. In fact, all of it literally depends on one pipeline. About 80% of oil exports to the European Union, which is our largest market, are carried out through the CPC. Thus, the fate of export earnings, which provides replenishment of the republican budget and the National Fund, depends on one pipeline, in which the share of the state represented by the national company KazMunayGas is only 19%,” the MP said.

The equipment of the marine terminal near Novorossiysk, through which the oil of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium flows, was damaged as a result of a storm.

CPC is a major international oil transportation project with the participation of Russia, Kazakhstan and the world’s leading producing companies, implemented for the construction and operation of a trunk pipeline with a length of more than 1,500 km. The system receives raw materials mainly from large fields in Western Kazakhstan, as well as from Russian producers, then it is transshipped in a port near Novorossiysk. Kazakh shippers account for about 80% of the transportation volume. The pipeline’s capacity is 67 million tons of oil per year, and after the implementation of the bottleneck elimination program, calculated until the end of 2023, the pipeline will be able to receive up to 83 million tons annually.