Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 16
By Ali Mustafayev – Trend:
Kazakhstan continues to comply with the OPEC deal, reducing oil production, and at the same time continues to increase oil production at the Kashagan oil field.
As the Kashagan field was launched relatively not long ago, Kazakhstan intends to enhance its capacity as much as possible, compensating the growing oil output by the reduction of oil production at the other oil fields of the country.
“Kazakhstan hampered oil production at two of the three largest oil fields of the country Tengiz and Karachaganak, each of which has oil reserves of more than one billion tons. This step was made to maintain the overall balance of oil output against the backdrop of increasing production at Kashagan field,” the energy expert, chief researcher at the Institute of Economics of Kazakhstan Oleg Egorov told Trend.
He added that the reduction of oil production in these fields is also due to the fact that Tengiz is not ready yet to for implementing technological system that would increase the oil production from 27 million tons per year to 37 million tons per year.
Karachaganak field also faces a number of obstacles, which don’t allow to increase the capacity, he said.
“To compensate the increasing capacity of the Kashagan field as part of an agreement with OPEC on reduction of oil output, Kazakhstan also reduces the level of oil production at its small fields, which produce between 3 and 5 and a half million tons of oil per year, but in aggregate the figure is not large, so it remains necessary to restrain also such large deposits as Tengiz and Karachagan,” said Egorov.
The expert stated that the increase in oil prices as a result of lowering the level of its production within the OPEC framework is also likely to stimulate Kazakhstan to continue to pursue a policy of reduction of the oil output.
OPEC and other major oil producers such as Russia and Azerbaijan reached an agreement in December 2016 to remove 1.8 million barrels a day from the market.
OPEC and its partners decided to extend its production cuts till March 2018 in Vienna on May 25, as the oil cartel and its allies step up their attempt to end a three-year supply glut that has savaged crude prices and the global energy industry.
The next meeting of the Joint OPEC-Non-OPEC Ministerial Monitoring Committee is scheduled for the day prior to the full ministerial meeting on November 30 in Vienna.