The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal, the key hub for Kazakhstan’s oil exports, was open and loading on Tuesday after the 5-day long weather-related suspension, but January exports have already fell 70% behind the schedule, four sources said.
The disruption to CPC oil exports limits supply for the vast Tengiz and Kashagan oil fields operated by the U.S. and European oil majors.
A drone attack on three oil tankers near the CPC terminal on Tuesday may further complicate the CPC Blend oil loadings.
The CPC pipeline, that handles over 80% of oil exports from Kazakhstan, ships oil to the Black Sea’s Yuzhnaya Ozereyevka terminal close to Novorossiysk.
The CPC has already cancelled at least 19 oil cargoes initially planned for loading in January as its terminal operations are still limited to just on single mooring point (SPM) and winter storms have disrupted loadings, two of the sources said.
One of them said that exports were at hardly 500,000 barrels per day so far in January, about 70% down compared to the initial loading schedule of 1.65 million bpd.
CPC has been working on resuming SPM 3 operations since December, but winter storms made it a hard task to finish repairs delaying the finish of the works.
As of Tuesday the SPM 3 was still not operational along with drone-hit SPM 2. The CPC terminal is able to work at about a half of its capacity via just SPM 1, while bad weather also constrains loadings.
According to the weather forecasts, the storms are expected to resume after January 17 further complicating the loadings.
“It’s hard for the terminal to catch up with the plan during the fine weather period as it has just one SPM operational,” one of the sources involved in the CPC exports said.
The CPC had suspended oil exports from the Black Sea’s terminal on Dec. 30 last year and resumed loadings on Jan. 5 for a couple of days.
A CPC representative declined to comment on the terminal operations.
Source: Reuters
