Oil production at Tengiz. Photo: tengizchevroil.com.
Oil production at Kazakhstan’s largest oil field, Tengiz, is unlikely to resume for another 7–10 days following the shutdown on Sunday, January 18. This is expected to reduce crude exports via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) system, Reuters reports, citing three industry sources.
“The suspension of production at Tengiz may last at least until the end of this week, but the pause could be significantly longer — stretching into February,” one source told the agency.
According to the report, the field’s operator, Tengizchevroil, has already canceled five export shipments of CPC Blend crude totaling about 600,000–700,000 tons that were scheduled to be loaded at the CPC’s Black Sea terminal in January and February.
So far, the disruption has not affected Kazakhstan’s overall oil output, as other major producers — Kashagan and Karachaganak — have begun ramping up production. However, one source warned that if the outage at Tengiz is prolonged, the CPC could start reducing pipeline throughput within a few days.
On January 18, a fire broke out at two transformers at the GTES-4 substation at Tengiz. The blaze was extinguished and personnel were evacuated. The cause of the incident has not yet been disclosed. The following day, Tengizchevroil announced a temporary halt to oil production at the Tengiz and Korolevskoye fields “due to power supply issues.”
Tengiz is Kazakhstan’s largest oil and gas field, located in the Atyrau Region, about 350 kilometers southeast of the city of Atyrau. The Korolevskoye field lies nearby, some 20 kilometers to the northeast. Both fields are operated by Tengizchevroil, which is owned by Chevron (50 percent), Exxon Mobil (25 percent), KazMunayGas, a subsidiary of Samruk-Kazyna (20 percent), and Russia’s Lukoil (5 percent).
Most of the oil produced by Tengizchevroil is exported via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium system. However, due to damage to the infrastructure at the CPC’s marine terminal in Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka near Novorossiysk, part of the crude is currently being rerouted through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline and to Germany via the Druzhba pipeline.
