The main terminal for exporting Kazakhstan’s oil resumed loadings after drone attacks on vessels caused an output cut last week, a step that may help to ease one of the market’s major supply worries.
Two tankers chartered by Chevron Corp.’s Tengizchevroil venture in Kazakhstan were loading at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal near the Russian port of Novorossiysk on Monday, the Kazakh energy ministry said. The loadings will allow companies to continue supplying crude to the CPC pipeline system and resume export operations, it said.
The CPC also resumed operations of the pipeline that links the giant Tengiz field to the oil terminal shortly after noon Moscow time, the company said.
Disruption at CPC added a fresh supply worry to a global oil market that was already reeling from attacks in the Strait of Hormuz as a result of the Iran war, while Yemen’s Houthi rebels opened up a new front of conflict in the Red Sea. European refiners in particular are heavily reliant on the shipments, and a resumption of flows should ease the pressure on the region’s crude market, where prices leaped last week.
Multiple vessels that were either loading at, or sailing to, the CPC terminal have been targeted in recent weeks. That left shipowners reluctant to call at the port, causing loadings to pause a week ago and forcing producers in Kazakhstan to cut output. The resumption was reported earlier by Bloomberg.
For exports to resume in earnest, there will need to be a continued lack of Ukrainian attacks in the coming days. The two ships that Kazakhstan’s energy ministry said were loading at the terminal both signaled an affiliation with Chevron in their destination field, likely as a means of avoiding attack, according to ship tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
Chevron referred a request for comment to CPC.
Loadings also resumed at the nearby Russian port of Sheskharis in Novorossiysk, after shipments there were halted by a combination of bad weather and drone strikes. The resumptions, along with a pause in US-Iran hostilities, helped push Brent crude futures down below $90 a barrel on Monday, after spiking above $100 last week.
While Kyiv hasn’t said it’s responsible for the attacks on ships calling at CPC, Ukrainian military authorities have mentioned several strikes on unidentified oil tankers in the Black Sea in recent days. The vast majority of the oil that comes out of CPC is Kazakh, not Russian, and the exports are not subject to western sanctions. Russian barrels flow out of Sheskharis.
The CPC terminal exported about 1.8 million barrels a day in May and June, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s almost 2% of global supply.
The facility is by far the largest outlet for Kazakhstan’s barrels, accounting for about 80% of the nation’s crude flows, mostly from projects developed in partnerships with international oil majors. The Central Asian country is the second-largest oil supplier to Europe.