Kashagan ‘Close to Restart’
Thursday 29 September 2016
Kazakhstan’s monster Kashagan oilfield is days away from a resumption of production, the country’s Energy Ministry said after pulling an earlier statement claiming output had already restarted, according to reports.
The Energy Ministry said on Thursday that output would begin in late September or earlier October, Reuters reported.
However, the news wire also reported that the ministry withdrew an earlier statement claiming that production had already resumed, citing an error in its publication.
Kashagan, in Kazakhstan’s sector of the Caspian Sea, was known to be nearing a resumption of production, after output initially started in September 2013, only to be halted two weeks later after problems emerged with the field’s gas pipelines.
Energy Minister Kanat Bozumbayev said earlier this month that preliminary work was due to begin on 24 September, with production “set for 23 October”.
Initial flows are set to begin at 75,000 barrels per day of oil, with Reuters saying this will rise to 150,000 bpd in November and 180,000 bpd in December.
Operator North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC) said previously that it planned to restart Kashagan at an initial production rate of 180,000 bpd, increasing to 370,000 bpd by the end of 2017 as the process of reinjecting associated gas is optimised.
The Kashagan consortium comprises KazMunaiGaz, Italy’s Eni, US supermajor ExxonMobil, Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell, France’s Total, China National Petroleum Corporation and Japan’s Inpex.
The consortium plans to produce about 3.65 million barrels of crude by the end of 2016 if all goes well with the production restart.
Kashagan is one of the world’s biggest discoveries in recent decades, with reserves of about 10 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
The project has experienced major delays and cost overruns since 2005 when first production was originally targeted.