The Kashagan oilfield, which began production in 2013, is expected to hit the landmark 1 billion barrels of cumulative production by the end of the year, according to Kazakhstan media.
Kashagan is located in the North Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan and is one of the biggest oil discoveries globally of the past 50 years. The oilfield has approximately 35 billion barrels of oil in place, of which nearly half are estimated to be recoverable.
The Kashagan oilfield is being developed by the North Caspian Project consortium of international majors and Kazakhstan’s state oil firm KazMunayGas. The shareholders in the consortium include KazMunayGas with 16.88%, Eni, Shell, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies with 16.81% each, China’s CNPC has an 8.33% stake, and Japan’s INPEX Ltd holds the remaining 7.56%.
Since 2013, Kashagan has produced about 906 million barrels of oil and 75 billion cubic meters of gas, with total recoverable reserves estimated at around 15.885 billion barrels of oil and 1.4 trillion cubic meters of gas, Kazakhstan said last week after a meeting of Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov with Peter Larden, Senior Vice President of ExxonMobil.
The parties also discussed the expansion of another giant field in Kazakhstan, Tengiz, which started up earlier this year and will boost Tengiz oil output by 260,000 barrels per day (bpd).
As Kazakhstan has raised its production, it has become a major headache for the OPEC+ group, of which the country is part. Kazakhstan has defied production quotas and has been pumping well above its ceiling for years.
Kazakhstan cannot reduce its oil production as it has no right to impose output reductions on international firms that are operating more than 70% of Kazakhstan’s oilfields, Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov told Bloomberg last week.
Separately, Kazakhstan’s Deputy Energy Minister Alibek Zhamauov told Interfax last week that the country had already notified OPEC it would not cut its oil production.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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