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Kazakhstan starts moving oil around a closed route
With loading at the CPC terminal shut for a fifth day, Astana had begun redirecting exports to alternative routes and was assessing its losses, Kommersant reported on 20 July, while the consortium has gone to court against Ukraine over damage it values in billions of roubles. The energy ministry now frames the production cut as a technological necessity: with the terminal’s tanks full, companies trimmed daily volumes to stop the system overflowing.
Tengiz halves its output
Kazakhstan cut oil and gas condensate production on 22 July after export loadings stopped at the CPC terminal, Reuters reported, citing a source: daily output at Tengiz fell to 406,000 barrels from 925,000. The energy ministry confirmed a temporary reduction and said consultations are running with the consortium, shippers and shipowners.
Novorossiysk stops taking Kazakh oil
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium has stopped accepting Kazakh crude and the terminal’s tanks are full, Reuters reported on Wednesday. Tracking data shows at least two tankers bound for the berths have changed course. There is a measured precedent for what follows: when the terminal was attacked last November, Reuters reported Kazakh output falling about 6% the following month.
The market answers first: charterers flee the CPC water
Foreign shipowners are refusing to send tankers to the CPC terminal after four tankers were hit in four days, Bloomberg reported, and the consortium was expected to stop accepting Kazakh pipeline crude on Tuesday. If intake stays shut into the weekend, Bloomberg’s sources say, Kazakhstan’s producers will have to cut output. The war has traveled the route’s full length, from the berths to the wellhead.
The protest was answered by the next drone
Loading at the CPC terminal restarted on Sunday evening and stopped again on Monday morning, when a drone hit the tanker NELSA at the mooring where one of Sunday’s two tankers had burned. Twenty-two of the crew were taken off by CPC tugs. A day after Kazakhstan demanded the attacks end, the demand’s market price was set at zero.
The drones reached the tankers loading Kazakhstan’s oil
On 17 and 19 July drone strikes hit three tankers serving the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s Black Sea terminal, two of them at the loading berths with Tengiz and Kashagan crude aboard. Loading stopped, and on Sunday Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry called the attacks an encroachment on the country’s economic interests, demanded they end and reserved the right to claim damages.
The region’s fuel importer starts guarding fuel like an exporter
Kyrgyzstan, which buys over 90% of its fuel from Russia, banned the export of gasoline, diesel and crude on Tuesday, indefinitely: the ban runs until the domestic market is fully supplied, or until the EAEU’s common oil market arrives, whichever comes first. The government says it has asked five countries for help and signed fuel contracts with Belarus and China.
Almaty’s winter project is 26% built, and the premier starts naming names
Prime minister Bektenov used Tuesday’s government meeting to threaten the head of Samruk-Energo with personal responsibility if Almaty’s CHP-3 is not finished by year-end. The gas-conversion project stands at 26%. In June the same warning went to the head of the railways, who is now the former head of the railways.
Kazakhstan’s oil windfall lands on a 3.3-million-tonne hole
A day after Brent’s biggest jump in six years, Kazakhstan’s energy minister told the government that first-half output fell 8.4%, to 45.7 million tonnes. The price came from one war; much of the hole came from the other. And the ministry’s patch for it is the one this desk watches for: deferring maintenance.
Oil at $83 pays Kazakhstan and bills its neighbors
Brent settled at $83.30 on Monday, up 9.6% in what CNN called its biggest one-day percentage gain in over six years, after Washington announced a blockade of Iranian ports and Tehran hit two Emirati tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. Crossings through the strait have more than halved. For Central Asia the same price line runs in two directions at once.
Russia bans all diesel exports, and starts buying fuel itself
Resolution 854 of 8 July extends Russia’s diesel export ban to the producers themselves through 31 July, and deputy prime minister Alexander Novak says the country begins importing fuel this month. For the Central Asian states that run on Russian fuel, the quota survives on paper. The molecules now have a competing buyer.
Kazakhstan's oil runs through a Russian switch, and a drone just flipped it
Kazakhstan is Central Asia's largest oil producer, yet on 24 June a Ukrainian drone 170 km inside Russia cut its crude output by a quarter at one giant field. Karachaganak's gas is processed in Russia, at a plant Astana does not control, and when that plant burned, Kazakh oil had to stop with it. The region's energy heavyweight commands its own barrels less than its size suggests.
Ukraine hit Russia's largest refinery, and Central Asia runs on its fuel
On 6 July Ukrainian drones flew some 2,500 km to set fire to the Omsk refinery, Russia's largest and its biggest maker of gasoline. Industry sources say the plant halted its main unit and pulled its fuel from the market. For Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and their neighbours, who run on cheap Russian fuel, the war has reached the petrol pump.
Armenia is about to take its national grid from a Russia-linked billionaire under house arrest
Armenia’s government says it will declare the country’s electricity distribution monopoly an asset of overriding public interest in mid-July, the last legal step before it takes the grid from Samvel Karapetyan. The tycoon is under house arrest, his company is fighting in international arbitration, and the offer on the table would let the state acquire a network valued by outside estimates at roughly $360 million for close to nothing.
Russia asks Kazakhstan for petrol, and the supplier becomes the supplicant
Russia is in talks to buy about 50,000 tonnes of petrol from Kazakhstan as Ukrainian strikes knock out its refineries one by one. For years Russia was the region’s fuel backstop. That assumption is now running in reverse, and it is reshaping how Astana thinks about its own supply.
Hormuz shut again, and the southern route Kazakhstan is building sits behind the chokepoint
A cargo ship was hit off Oman on 25 June, the UN paused its evacuation of 11,000 stranded sailors, and Iran told vessels to use only its approved lanes through the Strait of Hormuz. For Central Asia the reminder is sharp: the wartime oil premium can return overnight, and the southern trade route Kazakhstan is betting on passes through the strait that keeps closing.
Central Asia is going nuclear on Russian reactors and Russian credit
Uzbekistan has poured the first concrete for its nuclear plant. Kazakhstan has signed a $16.5 billion deal for its own. Both will be built by Rosatom, financed largely by Moscow, and fuelled on Russian terms. The region that talks about loosening its dependence on Russia is pouring four decades of it into the ground.
The war that gave Central Asia an edge is over
The US and Iran signed the memorandum ending their war late Wednesday — Trump at Versailles, Pezeshkian in Tehran, Pakistan's Sharif as mediator in Islamabad. Hormuz is filling with ships again. For Central Asia, the windfall of the last three months begins to unwind, and a different door opens.
Central Asia’s wartime windfall ends with the war
For 100 days the closed Gulf made Central Asia’s oil more valuable and its non-Gulf routes look wise. With Hormuz reopening, the region goes back to competing on price and reliability, with less of both than it would like.
The Iran war is redrawing Central Asia’s map to the sea
Every escalation in the Gulf pushes the region’s trade further off the route through Iran and onto the corridors west and east. The war hands Kazakhstan an oil-price windfall and a bill at the same time.