Kazakhstan and Turkey discussed a potential increase of Kazakh oil exports via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline to Turkey during the visit of Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to Ankara.
Tokayev and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed increased cooperation in the energy sector, including higher Kazakh oil exports via the BTC pipeline, the office of the Kazakh president said.
Kazakhstan raised its oil exports via BTC by 12% to about 785,000 tons, or about 34,000 barrels per day (bpd), in the first half of the year.
“We discussed the potential of higher exports and welcome Turkiye Petroleum’s intent to work on the Kazakh market,” Tokayev said.
“We are also interested in working with Turkish companies and using their competence in diversifying energy sources and power plant construction,” the president added.
Turkey, for its part, is boosting domestic natural gas production in its Black Sea waters and is looking to expand its international partnerships in oil and gas exploration in Bulgaria’s Black Sea, in the Caspian Sea region, and in Iraq.
For landlocked Kazakhstan, raising oil exports via the BTC pipeline to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan would lead to higher volumes, circumventing the biggest export route out of the country—pipelines to Russia’s ports on the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea.
The Russian Black Sea ports are Kazakhstan’s main crude oil export outlet, handling more than half of all its exports. Kazakhstan’s crude flows are not subject to Western sanctions despite the fact that they use Russian port infrastructure.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) operates the pipeline that transports oil from northwest Kazakhstan to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, a key hub for Kazakhstan’s oil exports.
The port of Novorossiysk handles most of Kazakhstan’s crude exports from giant oilfields in Kazakhstan operated by international oil firms, including U.S. supermajor Chevron.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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