ASTANA – Kazakhstan plans to export nearly 68.8 million tons of oil in 2024, based on production forecasts of 88.4 million tons, Kazakh Energy Minister Almassadam Satkaliyev said at a Nov. 25 meeting in the Mazhilis, a lower house of the Kazakh Parliament.
Photo credit: gov.kz
Export routes and production
According to the ministry’s press service, key routes include the Caspian Pipeline Consortium with 55.4 million tons of oil, Atyrau-Samara – 8.6 million tons, China – 1.1 million tons, Aktau port – 3.6 million tons, and railways – 0.05 million tons.
In ten months, Kazakhstan produced 73.5 million tons of oil. The decrease in production compared to earlier plans was attributed to major repairs at large fields such as Tengiz and Kashagan, unscheduled shutdowns at the Karachaganak field, and gas intake restrictions at the Orenburg Gas Processing Plant.
Kazakhstan’s commitments under the OPEC+ agreement, which limits the country’s output to 1.468 million barrels per day for 2024, impact the production levels.
Plans and challenges
Many of Kazakhstan’s oil fields, which account for 30% of total production, are in the late stages of development, leading to declining yields, particularly in the Mangystau, Aktobe, and Kyzylorda Regions. The two latter largely supply the domestic market.
By 2040, the trend of decreasing oil production at fields excluding large ones will continue. To address this decline, Kazakhstan has worked out measures to support mature fields, including tax incentives, with the condition of mandatory reinvestment in new production technologies. These measures aim to add 40 million tons of production by 2045.
Three major fields – Tengiz, Kashagan, and Karachaganak – currently account for 65% of national production and will soon represent 70%. These fields will boost output to over 100 million tons annually by 2026.
Tengizchevroil’s Future Growth Project is expected to increase production by 12 million tons annually. At Karachaganak, new compressors and a gas processing plant with a capacity of four billion cubic meters of gas, set to be operational by 2028, will help maintain production levels of 11-12 million tons annually. Additional gas processing plants at Kashagan, one planned with a capacity of one billion cubic meters per year and another with a capacity of 2.5 billion, will add three million tons to annual production.
New routes, auctions, and investments
Kazakhstan is expanding its oil transportation network, including the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is a promising route, with plans to transport 1.5 million tons of Kazakh oil via this corridor in 2024 and a potential future capacity of up to 20 million tons annually.
Meanwhile, the ministry seeks to recover 14 billion tenge (US$28.2 million) for contractual violations in 2023. Since 2020, nine electronic auctions have sold 110 subsoil plots, yielding 49.5 billion tenge (US$99.7 million) in bonuses and $443 million in pledged geological exploration investments. Since 2022, the ministry has terminated 52 contracts being re-listed for auction. A new auction for nine sites is scheduled for Nov. 27.
Kazakhstan plans to invest $21 billion in oil production at major fields by 2030 and an additional $5 billion in geological exploration by the same year. This will ensure 11 million tons of oil production by 2040.
