Kazakhstan’s state oil pipeline operator Kaztransoil succeeded in boosting exports of crude from the Tengiz field via Azerbaijan more than 18-fold in the second quarter of the year, according to a report from Trend.

On July 10, the news agency noted that Kaztransoil had loaded 347,100 tonnes of Tengiz oil – equivalent to about 27,844 barrels per day (bpd) – in the port of Aktau for transportation to Azerbaijan and transfer to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline between April and June. This is more than 18 times the amount of Tengiz crude exported along this route in the same period of 2022, it said.

Trend noted that the year-on-year increase had followed the signing of an agreement between Kazakhstan’s national oil company (NOC) KazMunayGaz and the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR). That document provides for KazMunayGaz to pump 1.5mn tonnes per year (tpy, 30,000 bpd) of Tengiz crude to market via the BTC pipeline, it said.

Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev had declared last year that he wanted to see an increase in oil exports via the trans-Caspian route, it added.

Subsequently, Kaztransoil reported that it had transported 10.3mn tonnes (835,444 bpd) of crude through its trunk pipeline network in the first quarter of 2023. This marked a rise of 591,000 tonnes (47,937 bpd), or 6.1%, on the figure of 9.709mn tonnes (787,508 bpd) posted in the same period of last year.

Kaztransoil’s trunk pipelines also handled 37,900 tonnes (3,040 bpd) of Russian oil for transit to Uzbekistan in the second quarter of 2023, up from 10,700 tonnes (858 bpd) in the previous quarter, Trend said in a separate report. It did not provide comparative data from last year, explaining that Russian oil transits through Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan had been suspended between 2019 and 2022. Prior to that freeze, Kaztransoil pumped 35,000 tonnes (700 bpd) of Russian oil to Uzbekistan, down from 67,900 tonnes (1,358 bpd) in 2017, the first year of shipments.