Update On Kashagan -- February 5, 2019

At the bottom of the blog there is a tag for Kashagan.

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