Kazakhstan and its oil major partners could annually take a $27bn hit if Ukraine keeps up its attacks on the Central Asian country’s main crude export terminal on Russia’s Black Sea coast. Moscow, on the other hand, might lose only around $0.6–0.65bn annually.

That’s the warning from Sergei Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Center think tank in Berlin, as outlined in an analytical report published by Carnegie Politika on December 3.

Vakulenko cautions that the consequences of disrupting or destroying crude export operations at Novorossiysk would only cause significant harm to Kazakhstan and Western oil field production partners Chevron, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, Eni and Shell, while giving Russia a chance to continue pretending it holds the moral high ground. Another potential difficulty that industry experts are starting to analyse is the impact European gasoline producers could face from the loss of Kazakh “light and sweet” oil blend volumes.

Roughly 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports, generating around 40% of the country’s entire export earnings, flow to the Russian Black Sea coast on a pipeline operated by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).

“Kazakhstan has found itself in a situation where it has built its main [oil] export route through one country: Russia,” Kazakh political analyst Dimash Alzhanov told Azattyk, saying that that made the country a “hostage” to political decisions taken “many years ago”.

On November 28, Ukrainian sea drones struck a large floating circular structure 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) out to sea from Novorossiysk.

The object was a Single Point Mooring (SPM). Such offshore facilities are used for pumping oil onto tankers. At Novorossiysk, there are three SPMs. When the attack occurred, one was undergoing maintenance, thus the damage caused by the naval drones has had a heavy impact on the port’s oil loading export capacity.

“Each mooring’s capacity is 800,000 barrels per day. Operations will now effectively fall to one-third of normal offshore loading capacity,” Vlad Paddack, a fellow at Nightingale Intelligence, a political foresight firm, told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service.

In terms of the horizon for repairs, Paddack pointed to another problem, telling the media outlet: “Two new SPMs nearing completion in Dubai cannot be installed quickly; delivery, installation, and commissioning will take several months. Given the latest disruptions, the full three SPMs will not be operational before summer-autumn 2026.

“A modern SPM comparable to CPC’s units costs $80-120 million, making replacement and unplanned infrastructure work a significant financial burden.”

The drone strike on the SPM has sparked a diplomatic spat between Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

The Kazakh government lodged an official protest with the Ukrainian government over what it described as "the third act of aggression against an exclusively civilian facility." This year has also seen Ukrainian drone strikes on a CPC pumping station and a CPC office in Novorossiysk.

In response to the protest, Ukraine proved rather scathing. It stated that its armed forces were “systematically weakening the aggressor's military-industrial potential,” and also observed Kazakh leniency towards Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and “the absence of previous statements by the Kazakh side condemning the Russian Federation's attacks on civilians in Ukraine.”

Kazakh officials have sought to downplay the immediate financial impact of the latest attack. Deputy Minister of National Economy Azamat Amrin said the disruption was unlikely to deliver a major blow to the national budget, but said precise calculations were still under way.

Analyst Vakulenko argues against the premise that Kazakhstan should have done much more to diversify its oil export routes, noting that Kazakhstan is a victim of its own geography and that no real alternatives exist for supplying its crude to Western markets. Building capacity to export crude towards China would be too costly, too time-consuming and would ultimately turn Kazakhstan into a hostage of a single market, he adds.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, meanwhile, only has very limited spare capacity when it comes to piping Kazakh oil, shipped across the Caspian Sea, to the Turkish Mediterranean coast.

“In theory, Kazakhstan could lay an undersea pipeline to Azerbaijan. Moreover, since the adoption of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea in 2018, such a project no longer requires the consent of all coastal states [which include Russia and Iran]. However, numerous technical challenges remain, primarily due to the lack of the necessary heavy equipment in the Caspian Sea—which is, effectively, a large lake. And in any case, such a project would be impossible to complete within three years,” Vakulenko writes.

Vakulenko also argues that the latest disruptions may ultimately benefit Russia, which only exports oil from North Caucasus oil fields via Novorossiysk. If CPC Kazakh and Russian oil flows are curtailed, global buyers such as India, China and Turkey are likely to ramp up purchases of Russian crude that is available, potentially at higher prices and with fewer discounts, while Moscow can shift blame to Ukraine and maintain a “comfortable stance” for itself in relation to the consequences of Ukraine’s strikes, Vakulenko posits.

“Oil and gas companies from countries allied with Ukraine are taking the situation to heart. For Chevron, for instance, Kazakhstan accounts for 20% of its production, making it the company’s second-largest source after the United States,” he notes.

“These companies are now using their lobbying power to persuade their governments to convince Kyiv to halt the attacks. Something similar likely happened during the strikes on the CPC earlier this year, so from the companies’ point of view, it must now look as though Kyiv fully understands the substantial damage it is causing them—and is doing so deliberately. And in Kazakhstan, what is happening is unlikely to generate any sympathy for Ukraine,” adds Valulenko.

“Kyiv may be hoping to use these attacks to demonstrate its resolve and its willingness to take unpopular actions to defend its interests. It could also be a desperate attempt to draw attention—a way to ensure that the war causes inconvenience not only to Ukraine and Ukrainians, but also to other countries, pushing them to make greater efforts to achieve peace. However, even in such a scenario, there is no guarantee that those affected will pressure Ukraine toward a fairer peace rather than simply a faster one,” Vakulenko concludes.