Sergey Kondratiev, Deputy Head of the Economic Department of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to the Internet portal Gazeta.ru on the Kazakhstan's decision to diversify oil supplies to European countries.
President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev instructed to diversify oil supplies. He called the priority the Trans-Caspian route, which runs through China, Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea and leads to European countries, bypassing Russia.
According to Sergey Kondratiev, it will take 3-4 years to establish supplies of Kazakh oil to the EU, bypassing Russia.
In his opinion, a wider development of the Kashagan field would help to replace Russia in the European oil market.“There are two ways to increase supplies of Kazakh oil to Europe bypassing Russia. The first involves laying a submarine cable along the bottom of the Caspian Sea to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. This will require additional hiring of tankers and at least 3-4 years to establish supplies. But even with the maximum load, the total capacity will be 15-20 million tons per year. For comparison, until recently, Russia supplied more than 100 million tons to the EU,” Kondratiev told Gazeta.Ru.
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