Astana is looking for more ways to move its oil.
Russia, its principal export outlet, is rife with disruptions. Damage to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s (CPC) Black Sea terminal in November 2025 suppressed exports into early 2026, while the recent July attacks on tankers threatened roughly 1.5 million barrels per day.
Joseph Shumunov.
The vulnerability would not be so enormous if 80% of Kazakh oil exports did not move through the CPC terminal near Novorossiysk.
But is Kazakhstan merely searching for emergency alternatives amid instability? Or is this a transformation it has been preparing for?
The answer is consequential: Kazakhstan is attempting a wholesale upgrade of its oil-export strategy, one befitting a rising regional power. It is moving from rational efficiency toward strategic resilience, from accepting routes toward shaping them, and from concentrated dependence toward managed interdependence. Although the CPC will remain dominant through 2030, Astana is seeking greater control over the risks, partnerships and infrastructure connecting its oil to international markets.
From rational efficiency to strategic resilience
The CPC transports Kazakh oil, particularly from Tengiz, to global markets, making it the most commercially attractive route.
When it was created in 1992, a fledgling independent Kazakhstan was looking to enter international energy markets. The CPC was the rational choice. It, for instance, transported up to 1.3 million barrels per day back in 2021; avoided the additional loading, shipping and crossing costs of a Trans-Caspian route; and its 1,510-kilometer pipeline, according to area studies analyst Ilya Roubanis, would be extremely difficult to replicate. Astana selected efficiency while adjusting to a new geopolitical environment.
Contrast this with Azerbaijan. According to Ken Moriyasu, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, Azerbaijan chose the expensive option. The Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline through Georgia and Türkiye required what he called an “insurance premium for strategic autonomy” to avoid dependence on competing producers. Kazakhstan captured the CPC’s immediate savings but accepted greater concentration risk.
The stakes will rise alongside production. The KazEnergy 2023 National Energy Report anticipated high output from Tengiz, Kashagan and Karachaganak, with national production potentially reaching 105 million tons. Higher output requires dependable market access; otherwise, its advantage can be undermined by one constrained route.
The lesson is simple: the cheapest route is not necessarily the least costly once the consequences of interruption are included. President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev affirmed as much in 2024: “With unprecedented international turbulence, the priority is to further diversify export routes.” Diversification, however, requires more than identifying alternatives. It requires Kazakhstan to help shape the infrastructure and partnerships behind them.
From route-taker to route-shaper
As a landlocked, post-Soviet producer, Kazakhstan has historically been constrained by existing pipelines and neighboring states. Its role was simple: produce oil and insert it into available routes.
But Kazakhstan does not have to remain a route-taker. Although it cannot independently control its export geography, it can shape the terms on which that geography operates. It can negotiate access to multiple corridors, invest in tankers, coordinate with transit states and treat infrastructure as an instrument of foreign policy.
Nowhere is Kazakhstan assuming this route-shaper role more clearly than in the Caspian. Tokayev identified the Trans-Caspian route as a “priority” in 2022. KazMunayGas and Azerbaijan’s SOCAR subsequently agreed to transport approximately 1.5 million tons annually through BTC, while Kazakhstan added the Caspian’s Taraz and Liwa tankers to its fleet, each with an 8,000-tonne capacity.
This gradual Caspianization continues. KazTransOil supplied 155,000 tons of Kazakh oil to BTC through Aktau in July, an 11.5% increase over the previous year. Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov said Kazakhstan plans to transport 2.2 million tons through BTC in 2026. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have also discussed using the idle Baku–Supsa pipeline for between three million and five million tons of Kazakh crude.
But this role has limits. According to Andy Kuchins, a senior fellow at the Center for the National Interest, major expansion would require high capital expenditure, long-term purchase commitments and several years of construction. Oil majors like ExxonMobil and BP are “more reluctant now as compared to the 1990s” to finance large projects in remote markets.
The direction is nevertheless clear: Kazakhstan is moving from accepting the routes geography provides toward assembling the infrastructure and partnerships it needs. It is not yet a fully fledged route-shaper, but it is steadily behaving like one—using new routes not to eliminate dependence, but to distribute it more strategically.
From concentrated dependence to managed interdependence
Every export option depends on another state, infrastructure operator, or external market. Self-reliance is not realistic. Kuchins nevertheless argues that Astana can “reduce concentration of its dependence on Russia.”
Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy reported 73.4 million tons of oil exports during the first eleven months of 2025. Separately reported full-year route data show 64.8 million tons transported through the CPC, 9.3 million through Atyrau–Samara, 3.5 million through Aktau, 1.1 million through Atasu–Alashankou toward China, and approximately 100,000 by rail. Of the 78.8 million tons accounted for in this route-level data, approximately 94% moved through the two Russian corridors. Kazakhstan therefore possesses several export routes, but its portfolio remains highly asymmetrical.
Herein lies its greatest oil-policy shift: managed interdependence. This means distributing export relationships so that no transit state possesses overwhelming influence over Kazakhstan’s market access. Each direction performs a different function.
And at the moment, Kazakhstan is assessing four directions—some mainstay, some new.
The Russian route
The CPC will remain dominant because it offers unmatched capacity, established infrastructure and lower costs. Kuchins and Roubanis expect structural dependence to persist through 2030. Following the Tengiz expansion, Kazakhstan may become more dependent on the CPC in the short term even as its long-term strategy diversifies. Diversification does not require abandoning the CPC; it requires making an interruption less damaging.
The Trans-Caspian route
BTC could absorb Kazakh crude as Azerbaijani production declines, while Baku–Supsa could provide another outlet. Neither would match CPC volumes, but together they would widen access to global buyers.
Europe also has a stake in this.
The European Union imported 52.4 million tons of Kazakh crude just in 2024, making Kazakhstan its third-largest external supplier. If Europe wants westward diversification, it must help make projects bankable through financing and long-term commitments. Brussels and its partners are therefore mobilizing 10 billion euros to improve transport connections with Central Asia. According to Roubanis, “building ties with the region in the short run is necessary for the EU’s long-term positioning.” The push indicates that Trans-Caspian connectivity is not just a Kazakh interest, but one shared by the whole region.
The Chinese route
China may offer the easiest immediately available opportunity to reduce dependence on Russia. The Kazakhstan–China pipeline transported 19.5 million tons in 2025, but that included domestic deliveries and Russian transit. Direct Kazakh crude exports through Atasu–Alashankou were planned to be 1 million tons in 2025, compared to the more than 11 million tons per year flowing with non-Kazakh suppliers.
China remains a credible expansion market and willing financier. Yet the fastest way to reduce Russian dependence could deepen dependence on China. Moriyasu similarly argues that Kazakhstan does not want to exchange one concentrated dependency for another. Unlike the Trans-Caspian route, China provides access to one principal market rather than multiple global buyers.
The Southern route
A corridor through Iran—possibly toward Pakistan and India—could be compelling but faces formidable political and economic obstacles. But it should not be dismissed altogether.
Moriyasu suggests that “Iran offers Central Asia one of its shortest routes to warm-water ports.” Although current geopolitical conditions severely constrain this option, he argues that “infrastructure Kazakhstan builds today will still be operating decades from now. Astana should therefore avoid making long-term infrastructure decisions on the assumption that today’s geopolitical map is permanent.”
The southern route’s present value lies in preserving a long-term option, not in providing a realistic alternative before 2030.
From east to west and north to south, Kazakhstan is not moving from dependence to independence. It is moving from one dominant dependency toward a deliberately balanced portfolio of interdependence.
A more advanced role, but not autonomy
Kazakhstan’s transformation should not be measured by whether the CPC ceases to dominate. By 2030, it will likely remain the principal corridor as Trans-Caspian volumes rise incrementally and eastbound capacity becomes more important amid regional instability and escalation. The resulting portfolio will be broader, though still asymmetrical.
The strategy is itself an upgrade—a threefold one. Resilience is becoming the objective, route-shaping the emerging function, and managed interdependence the organizing principle.
Looking forward, Kazakhstan’s strategic upgrade lies not in escaping geography, but in developing the infrastructure, partnerships and political leverage needed to manage geography more effectively.
The author is Joseph Shumunov, a Non-Resident Research Fellow at the Topchubashov Center in Baku, Azerbaijan, and a Fellow at Nightingale Intelligence.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Astana Times.
