Kazakhstan shipped 120 thousand tons of oil to Germany in June in a test mode

Alexey Belogoryev commented to Business FM about the possibility of replacing Russian oil with Kazakh one for supplies to Europe via the Druzhba oil pipeline.

From the point of view of resources, Kazakhstan can replace the falling volumes from Russia, the question here is the political will of both Russia, given its role as a transit country, and European buyers. To what extent it will be possible to renegotiate the contractual terms, and to what extent Russia is generally interested in such a substitution, this is a matter of complex agreements. In terms of volumes, Kazakhstan can find the necessary amount of oil, given the increase in production, but this will also not be a one-time increase, but a long process to completely replace the supplies that came from Russia via Druzhba, it will take at least six months, if not more, from the point of view of redirecting logistics, changing contracts.

But I would not say that this is a basic scenario, after all, the possibilities for preserving Russian supplies remain, despite [the events]. It is clear that Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are obvious sources of oil and gas instead of Russian supplies going to Eastern Europe. They have been looking at them for a long time, it was before 2022, I would say that they have been interested in it for two or three decades, including in the context of replacing Russian supplies, there is no new idea here. The question is whether Russia is ready, because Russia is a transit country for most of these supplies. Are there economically feasible alternative routes bypassing Russia in terms of Kazakh oil? There are no such opportunities, and, accordingly, what price and other conditions will be there.