BAKU, Azerbaijan, Mar.11
By Nargiz Sadikhova – Trend:
Kazakhstan’s liquids output in January 2020 was the same level as in December 2019 having amounted to 1.89 million barrels a day, Trend reports with reference to OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR) for March.
OPEC said that this volume also corresponds to the extraction volume in January 2019.
While crude oil production in the country January 2020 decreased by 9,000 barrels a day to average 1.62 million barrels a day (down by 11,000 barrels a day compared with a year ago), natural gas liquids output remained flat month-on-month at 0.27 million barrels a day, and represents the same as a year ago.
“Kazakhstan’s oil production in 2019 is not estimated to have grown year-on-year due to heavy maintenance; however, for the current year, total liquids production is forecast to grow by 0.02 million barrels a day to average 1.84 million barrels a day,” the OPEC said.
On the morning of March 9, 2020, Brent crude plunged 25 percent dropping to its lowest since February 2016 and recording the biggest one-day percentage declines since Jan. 17, 1991.
Trading volumes in the front-month hit record highs in the previous session after a three-year pact between Saudi Arabia and Russia and other major oil producers to limit supply fell apart on March 6, 2020.
At the end of 2018, OPEC and a number of non-affiliated countries (Kazakhstan being one of them) decided to extend the agreement on reducing oil production, which has been in force since the beginning of 2017. The countries agreed to reduce their production by a total of 1.2 million barrels per day from the level of October 2018.
A decision was passed in Vienna on July 2, 2019, regarding the extension of the agreement on the reduction of oil production by the countries of OPEC and non-members of the cartel until the end of the first quarter of 2020.
Kazakhstan has supported the decision to reduce oil extraction by additional 500,000 barrels a day within the framework of OPEC+ agreement under the decision made during the 7th OPEC and non-OPEC Ministerial Meeting held in Vienna, Austria, on Dec. 6, 2019.
Thus, latest liabilities of Kazakhstan within the agreement were 1.843 million barrels a day compared to 1.86 million barrels a day previously.
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