Kazakhstan buys tankers to transport oil bypassing Russia
1.09.2023 - 09:10
Kazakhstan is buying tankers to transport its oil through the Caspian and Black seas. Thus, the country can look for an alternative to the main export pipeline through the Russian Federation.
A division of the state-owned company “KazMunayGaz” has already purchased two tankers with a deadweight of 8,000 tons each for the transportation of oil across the Caspian Sea, Deputy Minister of Energy of Kazakhstan Yerlan Akkenzhenov told Bloobmerg.
He added that the company plans to purchase two more vessels with a deadweight of 80,000 tons each for operation in the Black Sea.
Akkenzhenov says Kazakhstan is exploring such alternatives, even though the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which runs through Russia, remains the most profitable route for crude oil exports. It is “difficult for other modes of transport to compete” with CTC, the minister noted.
CPC shipped about 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports last year, delivering crude via an overland pipeline from the country’s main fields to a Black Sea tanker terminal near the Russian port of Novorossiysk.
According to Akkenzhenov, this year Kazakhstan exported 300,000 tons of oil through the Caspian Sea and through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which runs from Azerbaijan to Turkey, and plans to send about 1.5 million tons this year.
The photo is illustrative.
