Kazakhstan Seeks Alternative to CPC for Oil Transport

Kazakhstan is buying tankers to ship its oil across the Caspian and Black Seas, in an attempt to ship oil via alternative routes to the CPC pipeline according to Bloomberg.

• A unit of KazMunayGas already bought two tankers with deadweight tonnage of 8,000 tons each. It plans to buy another two vessels with deadweight tonnage of 80,000 tons each to operate in the Black Sea, said deputy energy minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov.
• Kazakhstan is exploring these alternatives even as the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which runs through Russia, remains the most profitable route for the country’s crude exports, the minister said.
• Oil exports via CPC totaled 40.5 million tons of mostly Kazakh oil as of Aug. 18, according to the consortium’s website. The CPC shipped about 80% of Kazakhstan’s petroleum exports last year and the oil from the terminal is an increasingly important supply alternative to Russian crude for Europe since the invasion of Ukraine. Yet interruptions to operations of the terminal in the spring and summer of 2022 forced Kazakhstan to temporarily curb oil production. The war has also increased the risk to shipping in the region.
• This year, Kazakhstan already exported 300,000 tons of oil across Caspian Sea and via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and aims to send about 1.5 million tons in total this year, according to Akkenzhenov.