The ledger, as minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov presented it on Tuesday: oil and condensate at 45.7 million tonnes for January to June, 91.6% of last year’s level; gas down 4.1% at 31.4 billion cubic meters; refining off 2.1%. The full-year target stays at 98 million tonnes, against 99.6 million produced in 2025, and the ministry says accumulated country losses have been cut from 4.9 to 3.3 million tonnes.
Most of the causes the ministry names trace to the other war, the one over Ukraine: restrictions at the CPC terminal, whose Novorossiysk moorings sit in a drone war’s flight path, and Karachaganak deliveries choked since June’s strike on Orenburg, the Russian processing plant a tenth of Kazakh oil depends on. The May accident at Tengiz did its own, unwarlike damage. One war set Monday’s price; the other has spent months shaving the volumes.
The patch is the detail worth keeping. To claw back up to 2 million tonnes, the ministry moved Kashagan’s 30-day planned maintenance from June 2026 to 2027, and it is negotiating with the majors for more output; the July OPEC+ quota conveniently rises to 1.608 million barrels a day. Skipping a maintenance window to fill this year’s ledger borrows the barrels from next year’s reliability, on the field with the region’s most expensive repair history.
Skipping a maintenance window borrows this year’s barrels from next year’s reliability.
The trajectory softens the alarm without removing it. The first quarter ran 19.8% below last year, January to May 10.2%, the half-year 8.4%: the hole is shrinking month by month as fields recover and workarounds bed in. At $83 crude, even reduced volumes pour revenue into the budget. The same meeting reported 4.1% GDP growth carried by the non-oil economy, and inflation slowing for a 9th straight month.
What to watch is the crossing point of the two lines this desk drew yesterday and today: whether the price holds above $80 long enough to outweigh the lost tonnes; whether the export-loading data through Novorossiysk shows August normalization; and what the deferred Kashagan window costs when 2027 has to host it, because a maintenance bill postponed in an oil state has a habit of arriving with interest.