“Kazakhstan’s Oil Transit Through Russia: Importance and Resilience Amid Sanctions”

2023-05-27 16:26:55

As Western sanctions rain down on the Russian oil sector, Kazakhstan intends to continue to transit its black gold through Russian territory, as Yerjan Achikbayev, Kazakh Ambassador to the United States, told Sputnik. A transit ban is not on the agenda and, according to him, is an “apocalyptic scenario”.

Such sanctions would indeed be detrimental to Astana but also to the global market, the official stressed.

“We start from the mutual interest of all parties, from the interest of the stability of the world market, the stability of supplies. This is vital both for the functioning of the Kazakh economy and for the whole of the world economy”.

The ambassador also recalled the importance of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) oil pipeline, 1,500 kilometers long, which links the Kazakh deposit of Tengiz to the Russian port of Novorossiïsk. A vital structure for the country’s exports, especially since Astana is working on the extension of these Tengiz fields.

“Statistically, this represents 80% of our exports, and we are also working to increase oil production in Kazakhstan. We need to understand how to deliver these additional volumes,” he told Sputnik on the sidelines of the Trans-Caspian Forum in Washington.

Sanctions once morest Russian oil have followed one another since the start of the conflict in Ukraine. Europe had decided on an embargo on Russian black gold in early December, before a price cap was decided by the G7. In return, Moscow had declared that it would no longer sell to countries respecting this ceiling.

In May, the European Union had also proposed to formalize the suspension of supplies by the Druzhba pipeline, serving Germany and Poland. These countries had previously refused to buy Russian oil domestically.

Moscow, for its part, redirected some of its flows, trading more and more with India and China. In March, Russia supplied 18% of Chinese black gold imports and 43% of Indian imports, according to OPEC data.

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