MFA: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan need to address bottlenecks in Middle Corridor

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan need to address the bottlenecks in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (Middle Corridor), Kazakhstan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Roman Vassilenko told EURACTIV, Report informs.

Vassilenko spoke at length about the need to address bottlenecks in the so-called “Middle Corridor” linking China to Europe by land, which grew in importance after Russia started the war in Ukraine.

Among the necessary projects, he mentioned the extension of the ports of Kuryk, near Aktau, on the Kazakh shore of the Caspian Sea, and on the other side, the Alyat port near Baku, in Azerbaijan.

Asked about Kazakhstan’s oil exports to the EU at a time when its big neighbor, Russia, which is under EU sanctions, has tried to disrupt Kazakhstan’s export to the EU, he acknowledged there had been “some disruptions”, but in the end, Kazakhstan had been able to send “almost the same export amounts as the year before [the sanctions]."

A Russian court closed a key oil terminal for the export of Kazakh oil on July 6, two days after the president of Kazakhstan told Council President Charles Michel that his country is ready to send more oil to the EU.

Vassilenko said that these “incidents” had made his country realize that other options were needed, mentioning that for the first time, small amounts of Kazakh oil had been shipped through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline.