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Kashagan Giant Oil Field Won't Restart Output Before Next Year

Oil production at Kazakhstan’s huge Kashagan field, halted since mid-October because of a dangerous gas leak, won’t resume before next year, according to people familiar with the matter, casting a cloud over one of the world’s biggest energy projects. Equipment needed to inspect a leaking pipeline connecting the field in the Caspian Sea to an onshore processing unit won’t arrive on site before mid-November, the people said. The inspection will determine how much of the pipeline must be replaced, and once it is completed a preliminary report on how to conduct repair work won’t be submitted to Kashagan operators before late December, they said. NCOC, the consortium of oil companies operating the field, said it was too early to say when production—which exceeded 75,000 barrels a day at the time of the shutdown—might restart. “No prediction can be made,” a NCOC spokesman said. The stoppage at Kashagan after barely […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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China seen replacing Russia as central Asia’s outside energy force

China potentially could supplant Russia as the main energy broker in central Asian countries that don’t have their own significant fossil fuel resources, suggested 10 graduate fellows from the region at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies. But the relationship would be more commercial than geopolitical, the Fall 2013 Rumsfeld Fellows in the Silk Road Studies Program at SAIS’s Central Asia-Caucasus Institute added. Several countries in the region are aggressively pursuing waste energy and other biogas alternatives as well as hydropower, they said. “So the question becomes what the development of local firms pursuing green technology means alongside China’s presence,” said S. Frederick Starr, the institute’s chairman who moderated the discussion. “The people in this region are more resourceful than some outsiders believe. What’s happening on the smaller scale may mean more and be a bigger response to the fear of Chinese dominance than they expect.” An […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Nearly half of Kazakhstan’s oil reserves in giant Kashagan field

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 (UPI) — Nearly half of Kazakhstan’s proven oil reserves are situated in the Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. The EIA, the U.S. Energy Department’s statistical arm, said Kazakhstan is estimated to hold 30 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. Kashagan, the fifth largest oil field in the world in terms of volume, holds an estimated 13 billion barrels of oil. The North Caspian Operations Co., a consortium of national and international energy companies, announced the first barrels of oil from Kashagan were produced Sept. 11 . A production rate of 75,000 barrels of oil per day from the field was reached in early October. The EIA said Kashagan suffered several “repeated delays” that it says were associated with the high cost of operating the offshore field. Kazakhstan became an oil producer in 1911 but didn’t achieve a meaningful production […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Nearly half of Kazakhstan's oil reserves in giant Kashagan field

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 (UPI) — Nearly half of Kazakhstan’s proven oil reserves are situated in the Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said. The EIA, the U.S. Energy Department’s statistical arm, said Kazakhstan is estimated to hold 30 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. Kashagan, the fifth largest oil field in the world in terms of volume, holds an estimated 13 billion barrels of oil. The North Caspian Operations Co., a consortium of national and international energy companies, announced the first barrels of oil from Kashagan were produced Sept. 11 . A production rate of 75,000 barrels of oil per day from the field was reached in early October. The EIA said Kashagan suffered several “repeated delays” that it says were associated with the high cost of operating the offshore field. Kazakhstan became an oil producer in 1911 but didn’t achieve a meaningful production […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple