Transportation

The 1,500-kilometer Uzen-Atyrau-Samara (UAS) pipeline to Samara, which is the main export outlet, was the Company’s main export outlet until recently. This has been reinforced since 2018 by the 1,510 km pipeline built by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) to the Russian city-port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea. This route is more profitable for the Company, which is why we are working to increase the percentage of exports via CPC.

With a capacity of 10 million tonnes per year (200 kbopd), the 1,000-kilometer Atasu-Alashankou pipeline between Kazakhstan and China started active in December 2017. Other pipeline routes across Kazakhstan are under consideration. A different route was created in July 2017: the first direct pipeline linking the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, with a predicted capacity of 50 million tonnes (1,000 kbopd). The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which was inaugurated in July 2006, links Baku, Azerbaijan, and Ceyhan, Turkey. This pipeline offers Kazakhstan’s oil a potential alternate route.

Kazakhstan has a rapidly increasing and diverse export market while depending on its neighbors to ship its oil abroad. Due to our close ties to our parent firm, JSC Ushkuyu Oil Transport, The Business has obtained access to their infrastructure. In 2016, JSC Ushkuyu exported 59% of the crude oil made on its principal assets, UMG and EMG. In this period, the CPC pipeline exported 26% and the UAS pipeline 33% of the company’s sales of crude oil.