Kursiv carried the Bloomberg report at 18:13 Astana, under Zhanbolat Mamyshev’s byline, with the agency’s sourcing intact: people familiar with the situation who asked not to be named because the information is confidential. By that account Kazakhstan sought about $20 billion of disputed costs. The field, the country’s second largest, came on stream years late and far over budget. The tribunal found the claim for costs incurred between 2011 and 2015 was filed too late and let claims of about $8 billion go forward.
Nobody with a stake in the case spoke. Kazakhstan’s energy ministry and the operator, North Caspian Operating Company, did not answer Bloomberg’s requests. ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies, KazMunayGas and Inpex declined to comment, and CNPC and Eni did not immediately respond. Those seven are the consortium.
Kazakhstan sought about $20 billion of disputed costs.
The $20 billion of cost claims is one strand of a case that has grown for three years. Bloomberg’s own chronology, repeated by Kursiv, starts with a $13 billion claim against NCOC in April 2023 over tender procedures and unfinished contract work, raised later to $15 billion, then to a lost-profit claim of $150 billion. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, reporting in August on a $10.7 billion corruption strand inside the closed arbitration, put the total at $160 billion, as CAW reported on 17 August. Kursiv’s text does not say whether the $12 billion comes off the figure above $150 billion or sits beside it, so the two totals stand with their sources and are not added here.
The arbitration runs beside a fine. The 2.36 trillion tenge environmental penalty against NCOC, about $5.2 billion at September’s rate, has been on hold since 7 September because the consortium challenged the enforcement officer’s actions and the Atyrau administrative court requested the case file, the justice ministry said on 10 September, adding that collection would continue in the manner established by law. Nothing in Thursday’s report connects the tribunal’s ruling to that fine.
ExxonMobil has made its money conditional, by Bloomberg’s account. The company told Kazakhstan that a potential $80 billion joint investment to expand Kashagan, through a 50-50 venture with KazMunayGas, depends on resolving the arbitration, with production rising to 600,000 barrels a day. CAW reported the offer on 7 August and KazMunayGas’s description of the $80 billion report as unreliable on 10 August.
The cost dispute has a history. The partners have invested about $55 billion, production averaged about 400,000 barrels a day in 2025, and first oil came in September 2013, eight years late and $45 billion over the initial budget, then stopped a month later after leaks in a cracked pipeline and resumed under NCOC in 2016. NCOC’s 2025 profit of 1.848 trillion tenge put it first among Kazakh companies, by Kursiv’s own earlier ranking.
What the report leaves out is most of the award. The tribunal’s seat and rules, the date of the ruling, whether it is partial or final, what the $8 billion of surviving claims consists of and any reaction from Astana are all absent from the page, and no Kazakh official had spoken by Friday morning.
The earliest costs fell for lateness, the claims filed in time go forward, and the figure above $150 billion waits for a ruling of its own.