It should have turned Kazakhstan into a global oil and geopolitical champion. Instead, it turned out to be a cul-de-sac, swallowing over $50 billion since its discovery almost two decades ago. Kashagan, a mammoth-sized offshore oil field with recoverable reserves of some 13 billion barrels that stretches over more than 3000 square kilometers, was recently shut down indefinitely due to technical problems. With Kazakh ambitions scuttled and the reputation of the project-managing consortium in tatters, will it go down in history as the Titanic of oil fields? From euphoria to despair, Kashagan has been through it all. Major cost overruns, intense squabbles between major stakeholders, and insurmountable technical problems prevented the project from seeing daylight in 2005, as contractually required. Instead, it only began pumping the first barrels in September last year, but this lasted just a few days before the appearance of […]