Kazakhstan, Astana, June 29 /Trend, D. Mukhtarov /
Kazakhstan's oil reserves amounted to 30 billion barrels as of late 2011, Investment Profitability Research Agency Director Kainar Kozhumov said on Friday.
"Oil reserves of Kazakhstan as of late 2011 amounted to 30 billion barrels," Kozhumov said.
He said over the past 20 years the world oil reserves grew by 60 percent or by 620 billion barrels, amounting to 1.6 trillion barrels, or about 226 billion tons.
"Latin America and the Middle East made main contribution to the growth of world reserves. It is 251 and 134 billion barrels, respectively," he added.
According to Kozhumov, over the past 20 years oil reserves in such regions as Latin America (a growth of over 4 times) and Africa (+119 percent) have increased significantly.
"With regard to the former Soviet Union countries, an increase in oil reserves here amounted to 115 percent. However, this fact did not affect the positions of these regions in the world oil production," he stressed.
He said the reason is that significant oil reserves in these regions are concentrated in the deep-water and difficult deposits, and their development requires a sustained high oil prices.
"Moreover, in case of maintaining high oil prices, over the next ten years we can expect a significant increase in oil production in these new centers of oil production," Kozhumov said.