Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which exports crude oil from Kazakhstan via a Russian Black Sea terminal, expects its oil exports to fall 7% short of a preliminary target owing to lower loadings from a key field, it said.

Supplies from the giant Tengiz oilfield are projected to fall by 7.9 million metric tons (158,000 barrels per day) from planned levels while loadings from the Kashagan oilfield are expected to rise by 3.3 million tons.

CPC also said that “deviation” from the plan will reach 4.8 million tons. It had initially planned to export more than 70 million tons (1.5 million barrels per day) of oil in 2024, up from a record high of 63.5 million tons in 2023.

That means the updated plans might have called for exports of 65.2 million tons this year, still higher than last year’s volumes.

Tengizchevroil (TCO), the Chevron-led Tengiz operator, undertook scheduled maintenance on one of six production trains at the Tengiz oilfield, resulting in a fall in oil output this month.

Kazakh Energy Minister Almasadam Satkaliyev told Reuters in March that the cost of the Tengiz expansion project had increased by about 5% from its previous $47 billion estimate.

Chevron expects TCO’s expanded operations to deliver more than 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed) in 2025, compared with about 630,000 boed in 2023.

The main CPC shareholders are Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft TRNF_p.MM (24%), Kazakhstan’s KazMunayGas KMGZ.KZ (19%), Chevron Caspian Pipeline Consortium Company CVX.N (15%), Lukarco B.V LKOH.MM (12.5%), Mobil Caspian Pipeline Company XOM.N (7.5%), CPC Company (7%) and Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures Limited ROSN.MM, SHEL.L (7.5%).
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Editing by Jason Neely and David Goodman)