Kazakhstan
The first count of July arrives from an unnamed source
Kazakhstan pumped 14% less oil a day in July than in June, the first month-scale measure of what the tanker war costs. The figure comes from an industry source through Reuters. The consortium that runs the route has still published nothing under its own name.
Bektenov turns shelf access into a directive
Kazakhstan’s Tuesday cabinet put first-half manufacturing output at 16 trillion tenge, about $34 billion at Tuesday’s official rate, up 9.8%, and ordered fair access to retail chains for the goods behind the number.
Ankara puts two names on the shipping war
Turkey’s foreign ministry on Tuesday named two Turkish-owned ships hit in a single evening off Novorossiysk and told the warring parties to make the Black Sea safe for civilian navigation. Kazakhstan’s export recovery now depends on how much of that warning the tanker market believes.
ExxonMobil promises Kazakhstan the long term
Three days after Chevron’s chief executive spoke for the CPC, ExxonMobil’s upstream president sat with the prime minister in Astana and confirmed, in the government’s readout, plans for a long-term presence in Kazakh oil and gas.
The drone war off Novorossiysk stops sparing crews
Since Saturday the approaches to Kazakhstan’s main export outlet have seen a cargo ship sunk and a Turkish-crewed freighter set ablaze, with three sailors gravely wounded. The terminal that carries more than 80% of Kazakh oil exports keeps loading at a third of its June intake, and July’s total has still not been published.
Kashagan’s arbitration deadline passes in silence
The end-July date for seating the arbitral panel has passed; no announcement of its composition has surfaced, and the enforcement the arbitration was meant to check keeps running.
Chevron speaks first on the CPC
The fullest account of the damaged export route came from Houston on Friday: the pipeline is flowing, two of three moorings are working, and Washington and Astana are discussing guarantees to keep it that way.
A cable starts across the Caspian floor
Laying of the Kazakhstan-Azerbaijan fibre-optic cable began on Friday from Baku toward Aktau, Kazakhstan’s digital development ministry said, with 15 to 20 days of marine work ahead and commissioning promised by the end of the year.
The CPC’s reprieve lasts three days
Drones struck two tankers serving the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s Black Sea terminal early on Thursday, and the consortium stopped loading for the second time in 10 days. The route carries more than 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports.
The western workaround acquires statistics at Batumi
Batumi port moved more than 4 million tonnes in the first half of 2026, up 8%, its press service said on 30 July. The port and its oil terminal are run by KazTransOil’s Georgian subsidiary, which makes the figure a Kazakh number as much as a Georgian one.
Moscow writes the fuel wall into a decree, and adds diesel
Russia’s government published the decree on 30 July: the gasoline export ban now runs from 1 August to 31 January 2027 and covers all exporters, and for the month of August diesel and marine fuel join it. Exports under intergovernmental agreements and humanitarian aid stay exempt.
A $90 barrel reaches the region from both ends
Brent traded above $90 on 29 July, up more than 6% in a day, after a Houthi attack on a Saudi tanker and American-Saudi strikes in Iraq. Central Asia meets the rally shipping at a fraction of its June tempo and importing fuel at world prices.
Washington picks up the phone on the CPC
Kazakhstan’s foreign minister Yermek Kosherbayev and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed the crisis around the Caspian Pipeline Consortium by phone on 29 July. No earlier cabinet-level American engagement with the route’s security has surfaced in the wires since the drone attacks began on 17 July.
Kazakhstan’s tungsten leaves before it matters
A metal the world has started to fight over, a pit that needs a slice of a national park to reach it, and a plant built to ship the ore out as concentrate.
Kazakhstan’s oil export duty falls 23% for August
Kazakhstan will levy $76 on each tonne of exported crude and light products in August, down from $99 in July, as its price-linked duty formula tracks a weaker oil price. The cut lands on volumes already thinned by the closure of the CPC route, so the state’s oil take shrinks on rate and quantity at once.
The war on Russia’s warehouses arrives in Kazakhstan
Ukrainian drone strikes on Wildberries’ Russian warehouses have burned through the stock of Kazakh sellers who trade on the platform, and they are pushing Wildberries and Ozon to move warehousing south into Kazakhstan. The first move costs Kazakh small traders real money now; the second offers Kazakhstan a larger logistics business, though not a cheap one.
A tungsten mine for a million tonnes of ore a year
Patokh Shodiev and Mukadaskhan Ibragimova, with a Chinese partner, will develop the Bayan tungsten deposit in North Kazakhstan region. Peak output is put at 1 million tonnes of ore a year, and the first year at 2,820 tonnes.
Atyrau loses power on the day the plan gets its deadlines
The prime minister set year-end deadlines for the repair campaign at 11:15 on Tuesday. By evening, load-shedding automatics had cut more than 6,000 homes on Atyrau’s left bank.
The corridor and the war now share one sea
Peskov called the strikes in the Caspian extremely dangerous on Monday. In the same days, the first cargo to move under electronic TIR across three countries crossed that water from Baku to Turkmenbashi.
A 20% reserve margin appears in a Kazakh plan
The cabinet put its energy and utilities national project on the table on Tuesday morning. Inside it sits a target for spare capacity, with a date on it.