Kazakhstan President Pledges To Double Pipeline Capacity

Kazakhstan's president has pledged to more than double the capacity of a pipeline transporting crude from his oil-rich country to Russia after talks with his Russian counterpart at which they agreed to step up energy cooperation.

"Practically we agreed to widen the capacity of CPC (Caspian Pipeline Consortium) to 67 million metric tons, which will mean that in the next eight years oil production in Kazakhstan is provided for," Nursultan Nazarbayev said.

The 1,510-kilometer pipeline, which connects oil fields in western Kazakhstan with the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, currently transports 28 million metric tons a year. The Central Asian nation is expected to become one of the world's top oil exporters. Kazakhstan is aiming to more than double its production from 1.3 million barrels to 3 million barrels a day by 2015.

However, it is actively seeking other transportation routes for its oil and its shipments through Novorossiysk are unlikely to increase as much as planned. In December, Kazakhstan inaugurated a pipeline to energy-hungry China, the former Soviet country's first pipeline bypassing Russia, designed to carry 140 million barrels of oil a year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is urging Kazakhstan to speed up talks on joining a U.S.-backed oil pipeline that starts in Azerbaijan.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which opened last May, allows the West to tap oil from the rich Caspian Sea fields, estimated to hold the world's third-largest reserves, bypassing Russia and Iran. Kazakhstan has said it could ship up to 30 million metric tons of oil yearly through the 1,770-kilometer pipeline that runs from the Azerbaijani port capital of Baku, via Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, but no deal has been signed yet.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that in addition to the oil industry, the two countries will also work together in the nuclear power field.

"Energy is one of the most fundamental areas of our cooperation, but it is not limited to hydrocarbons, but also electricity and atomic energy. We are natural partners in the area of atomic energy and there are very big perspectives here," he said.

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Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline (BTC) / South Caucasus gas pipeline (SCP)

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Posted 07/04/06

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