Kazakhstan announces that oil production at Tengiz has resumed

The energy ministry announced on Saturday that oil production at Kazakhstan's massive Tengiz Oilfield has been restored, with five wells now operating again.

The ministry stated that "production volumes will increase in stages as system parameters stabilize and process safety is assured."

Since the outage, production data for the largest field in Kazakhstan has been unavailable.

Kazakhstan announced on Wednesday that it would restart the Tengiz Oilfield in stages. It aims to reach full production within a week. Three unexplained electric?fires cost it 7.2 millions barrels of crude oil earlier this month.

Tengiz will likely have recovered less than half of its normal production by the 7th of February as it recovers slowly from the fires.

Kazakhstan's oil industry, which represents around 2% daily supply of global oil, has suffered a number of setbacks over the past few months. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium has suffered from the aftermath of drone attacks on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium which transports the bulk of Kazakh oil out of the country through Russia.

Tengiz is operated by Tengizchevroil. This joint venture was formed between Chevron Exxon Mobil KazMunayGas, and Lukoil. Chevron is 50%, Exxon Mobil 25% and KazMunayGas, a KazMunayGas subsidiary in Kazakhstan, owns 20%, while Lukoil, a Russian company, holds 5%.

Senior Kazakh officials met with Chevron and Exxon Mobil this week to discuss the Tengiz situation. They urged the U.S. major oil companies to speed up repair work and ensure the future safety and reliability of the field. (Reporting and editing by William Mallard, Hugh Lawson and Ksenia orlova)

(source: Reuters)