Kazakhstan’s massive oilfield Kashagan will resume production at a level of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of this month, Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Bolat Akchulakov told Reuters on the sidelines of an energy forum in Moscow.
“Production at Kashagan has been curtailed due to some ‘nuances’ with the equipment. We are conducting repair work,” the minister said.
The offshore oilfield Kashagan is one of the world’s biggest oilfields in terms of capacity to pump crude oil.
In early August, the oilfield was shut down after a gas leak was detected on the site. A few days later, the field operator said that it would partially restart production, and upon completion of repairs and integrity verification, full production would be restored at the facility.
In the middle of September, Minister Bulat Akchulakov said that the Kashagan oilfield would resume normal operations “in October at best.”
Kazakhstan’s oil production and exports have been lower in recent weeks due to the partial outage at Kashagan and urgent repairs needed at two of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s (CPC) terminals on the Black Sea.
Akchulakov told Reuters this week that all three CPC terminals would likely resume operations before the end of October.
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.
Higher production and exports out of Kazakhstan could be a relief for global oil supply just as the OPEC+ group is set to reduce supply to the market starting in November. Most of the actual cuts – estimated at around 1 million bpd compared to the headline 2-million-bpd cut to production – will come from OPEC’s de facto leader Saudi Arabia and some of its Gulf allies.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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