Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov signed the resolution on 5 September. It approves an investment agreement between the Ministry of Energy and GRES Kurchatov LLP for a condensing station of 700 MW: two units of 350 MW each, commissioned in stages by 2032, producing up to 5 billion kWh a year and creating about 4,400 jobs. The government's statement files the decision under President Tokayev's instruction to develop coal generation and promises "clean coal" technology, gas cleaning, emission filters and dust suppression to the standard of the Ecological Code and best available techniques.
Kurchatov is the town the Soviet test site left behind. The release makes the case for the station in the town's own terms: the National Nuclear Centre, the Park of Nuclear Technologies, research reactors, laboratories and the KTM tokamak. Kazakhstan's nuclear science city will run on coal.
The same two names appear on the plant and on the mine that will feed it.
The price has moved. In January Kursiv's headline put a Kazakhmys-linked power plant in Kurchatov at 760 billion tenge. By the foundation ceremony on 3 July, attended by the Abai akim Berik Uali and vice-minister of energy Sungat Yesimkhanov, the figure on the record was 881 billion, 16% more. At Monday's KASE close of 454.31 tenge to the dollar that is $1.94 billion, or $2.8 million per megawatt.
Vlast listed the founders. GRES Kurchatov LLP was created last year by Temirlan Utegenov, general director of Kazakhmys Energy. In April Eduard Ogay and Vladimir Dzhumanbayev, both formerly of the Kazakhmys group and both owners of businesses in metals mining, entered the list of founders. Two weeks before the government's decision a fourth founder joined the list: KM Kazakh Mining Company Limited, registered in Cyprus, whose beneficial owners are not disclosed. How the shares are split is not public.
The coal is on the record too. At the July ceremony the station's fuel was named as coal from the Karazhyra siding, and its output was routed by a line of about 120 km to a substation in Semey. Karazhyra's shareholder table, as the KASE register showed it at the end of January 2020, gave Eduard Ogay 20.1%, his two children 24.95% each, Vladimir Dzhumanbayev 20% and the former senator Yerlan Nigmatulin 10%. Vlast writes that Ogay also controls a company developing a coal deposit in the Abai region. The same two names appear on the plant and on the mine that will feed it.
What the grid will pay them is the missing line. The government's release names no tariff, no financing structure and no offtake terms; Kapital added none; and the text of the agreement itself has not been published. Vlast adds a second hole: the release does not say whether all the money is private or the budget contributes. Until the text appears, the cost of the station to the consumer is a number known to two parties.
The timing sits after the deficit the ministry is fighting now. In February vice-minister Yesimkhanov put the shortfall at 2.1 billion kWh in 2024 and 1.5 billion in 2025, promised less than 1 billion for 2026 after 669 MW came online last year, and said the deficit would disappear by the end of 2027 if the large projects due at the turn of the year are commissioned. Kurchatov's first unit is due by 2032. Its 5 billion kWh a year is more than three times the 2025 deficit: a plant sized for the load that comes after the surplus, approved three weeks after the 14 August blackout.