Today, Eurasianet / oilprice have a very nice update on this oil play. I don't think there was necessarily anything new, but simply an update.
Some data points:
- sulfurous oil: CPC Blend, a Kazakhstan-specific product
- one of several crudes coming from the area
- Tengiz, second-largest oilfield in Kazakhstan, northwester Atyrau region
- Karachaganak, farther north
- Filanovsky field, operated by Russia's LUKoil
- name derives from the pipeline built in 2001; 1,500 km pipeline
- the Caspian Pipeline Consortium:
- Transneft (Russia): 31%
- Kazakhstan state govt: 19%
- rest of consortium (US, Russia, Italy, UK): 50%
- Black Sea terminal: Novorossiysk, southern Russia
- problem: CPC Blen is a light grade of crude with one particularly nasty feature -- contains foul-smelling and corrosive mercaptans
- mercaptans: rotten egg odor; very, very strong, very, very rotten egg
- high levels of hydrogen sulfide
- also, incredibly corrosive to the pipeline that carries it
- partly because of these mercaptans, bringing Kashagan oil to market was catastrophically late
- was supposed to have come on line in 2013
- didn't come on line until 2016
- finally came on line at cost of almost $6 billion
- current capacity: 1.45 billion bopd
- Asia buying more of this oil each year
- may benefit from Iranian sanctions
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