Kazakhstan supplied 9.6% of the EU’s petroleum-oil imports in the first quarter, after the United States at 17.8% and Norway at 16.6%. Across 2025 its share was higher, 12.7%. Russia, which led this market until 2021, has dropped out of the top seven entirely after the EU’s bans on seaborne crude and refined products. European refineries have pulled in Kazakhstan’s light, low-sulfur CPC Blend to fill part of the gap.
This is the European leg of the same diversification the corridor story is about. Kazakh crude reaches Europe mainly through the CPC pipeline to the Black Sea and, increasingly, the Caucasus routes Astana is courting, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan line it promised this week to use more. Becoming a top-three EU supplier is the payoff of being the reliable non-Russian barrel.
A podium finish that rests on a shrinking base.
The trouble sits under the headline. Kazakhstan’s oil and gas-condensate output fell about 20% year on year in the first quarter, to 19.7 million tonnes, and its EU share has slipped from the full-year 12.7% toward under 10%. GDP growth cooled from 6.5% to 3%. CPC Blend has been disrupted before, and the premium it briefly won over Brent did not last. The podium finish rests on a shrinking base.
So Astana hedges east even as it sells west. It has lined up oil sales to South Korea and is courting Japanese buyers, looking for Asian outlets if European demand or its own output wobbles. The same multi-vector reflex that runs through everything else runs through the barrel: be the EU’s third supplier, and keep a door open to Asia in case the perch does not hold.