Kazakh oil pipeline slated for expansion

• Tweet

ASTANA, Kazakhstan, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- Russian oil pipeline company Transneft said it expects the volume of oil from a pipeline connecting Kazakhstan to the Black Sea to increase to 1.4 million bpd.

Mikhail Barkov, a vice president for the state-owned pipeline operator, said the link would reach its capacity of 1.4 million barrels per day by 2015. He added, however, that the expansion depends in part on oil field production, reports Bloomberg News.

Kazakhstan hosts the Kashagan oil field, one of the largest in the world, with as much as 16 billion barrels of estimated commercial reserves.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium pipeline, reports Bloomberg, carries about half of the designed volume from Kazakh oil fields to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. A preliminary jump to around 210,000 bpd is expected by early 2014 at the latest, said Barkov.

This week, Russian oil company Gazprom Neft announced it acquired a tar sands oil production facility in southern Kazakhstan. U.S. supermajor Chevron leads development at many of the country's lucrative oil fields, however.