Photo: pererabotka.gazprom.ru
The Orenburg Gas Processing Plant has resumed intake of gas from the Karachaganak field following a drone incident, Vlast.kz reports, citing Kazakhstan’s Minister of Energy, Yerlan Akkenzhenov, who spoke in the corridors of the Mazhilis (the lower house of parliament).
“They’ve started receiving gas (...). Gradually, as I promised yesterday, we’re recovering. Everything seems fine,” Akkenzhenov said. He added that production at the field will also be restored in parallel.
The Orenburg Gas Processing Plant is the largest facility of its kind in Russia. The drone attack on the plant became known on the morning of October 19. According to the governor of Orenburg Region, Yevgeny Solntsev, the incident caused “a fire in one of the workshops.”
Karachaganak is a major oil and gas condensate field in western Kazakhstan. Part of the extracted gas is reinjected into the reservoir, while the rest is sent to Russia, to the Orenburg Gas Processing Plant, as the field itself lacks processing facilities.
Due to the Russian plant’s suspension of raw gas intake, Kazakhstan was forced to reduce oil and gas condensate production at Karachaganak by 25–30 percent. The authorities emphasized, however, that the incident did not affect the country’s gas supply — domestic consumers continued to receive gas as usual, without any restrictions.
