Kazakhstan is actively seeking to redirect a portion of its crude oil exports away from its primary Black Sea terminal, exploring pipeline routes through Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey amid persistent threats to shipments passing through the Russian port of Novorossiysk. For Kazakhstan, the world's roughly 12th-largest crude producer and a landlocked nation sandwiched between Russia and China, the number of viable export corridors is inherently limited — a geographic reality that makes diversification difficult even under the best of circumstances.

"Transportation through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan system, shipments across the Caspian Sea through the territory of Azerbaijan, as well as the Baku-Supsa route are being considered," the Kazakh Ministry of Energy said on Monday, according to local media reports. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline already exists and has a capacity of roughly 1.2 million barrels per day, but it is primarily used to move Azerbaijani crude to Mediterranean markets, meaning significant additional volumes for Kazakhstan would likely require expanded throughput agreements and complementary Caspian Sea tanker infrastructure.

In addition to alternative seaborne routes, the ministry confirmed that Kazakhstan is working to increase eastward pipeline supply to China. The push for diversification comes as the country's crude oil exports have faced severe disruption in recent weeks due to Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian oil export infrastructure.

During July alone, flows through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) were suspended on three separate occasions, each lasting several days. These repeated disruptions have exposed a critical vulnerability in Kazakhstan's export strategy: its heavy reliance on a single Russian terminal for the majority of its seaborne crude shipments. The CPC pipeline, which originates at the Caspian coast in northwest Kazakhstan and terminates at Novorossiysk, carries approximately 80% of the country's total crude exports.

The CPC operates a pipeline running from the Caspian coast in northwest Kazakhstan to the Novorossiysk port, which handles the bulk of Kazakhstan's crude exports from major oilfields operated by international firms, including U.S. supermajor Chevron. The pipeline transports crude from three key Kazakh fields — Tengiz, Kashagan, and Karachaganak — in which major Western companies hold stakes, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Eni.

Affiliates of Chevron and ExxonMobil also hold minority stakes in the CPC itself. The Russian Federation is the consortium's largest single shareholder with a 24% stake.

Ukrainian forces have been targeting Russian energy infrastructure for months, and CPC infrastructure has been hit on more than one occasion. The most recent week-long shutdown temporarily removed more than 1 million barrels per day of Kazakh production from the market, compounding global supply risks at a time when oil flows are already under pressure from concurrent disruptions affecting both Black Sea and Middle East shipping routes. The episode underscores how the Russia-Ukraine conflict's impact on energy infrastructure extends beyond Russian producers, ensnaring third-party nations that depend on Russian transit corridors for their own exports.

Source: OilPrice.com. By Tsvetana Paraskova.