A consortium operating the pipeline that Kazakhstan uses to export the bulk of its oil has said the route may be largely unusable for up to two months because of infrastructure damage caused by a recent storm. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, or CPC, said in a March 22 statement that two of three tanker loading facilities at the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, which allow ships to take on oil at a safe distance from the shore, have been rendered inoperable. CPC chief executive Nikolai Gorban told reporters on March 23 that the loading of oil at the Novorossiysk terminal has stopped completely for the time being. While oil can be fed into the 1,500-kilometer pipeline, which starts at Kazakhstan’s giant Tengiz field on the eastern shores of the Caspian, shipments in March and April will fall fivefold compared with the usual volume, he said. The CPC pipeline […]