C. Coal

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 593.

B. Oil Infrastructure

The Kazakhstan oil infrastructure is considered to be in poor condition which has constrained possible exports. Currently exports excluding the Caspian Pipeline Consortium is limited to 500,000 b/d. Kazakhstan i also further hampered as the oil piplein infrastructure is not not set up to transport oil from the producing assets in the west to the main refineries located in the east of the country. The CPC provides an important outlet for Kazakhstan oil and it it is expected that it will be up graded so as to export close to 15 MMbbls/d.

Although Kazakhstan is a substantial producer of oil and gas, coal has dominated both energy production and consumption. It contains Central Asia's largest recoverable coal reserves, with 34.5 billion short tons of mostly anthracitic and bituminous coal. Major coal fields are Bogatyr and Severny. In 2005, Kazakhstan was the 9th biggest producer of coal in the world, and the 10th global exporter. Russia is the largest importer of Kazakh coal, followed by Ukraine. The biggest coal production company is Bogatyr Access Komir, which accounts for approximately 35% of Kazakh coal output.

Nuclear energy

Kazakhstan is the third country in the world for uranium production volumes, and it owns the world second biggest uranium reserves after Australia (around 1.5 million tons or nearly 19% of the explored reserves of uranium in the world). In 2006 Kazakhstan produced 5,279 metric tons of uranium, of which 3,010 metric tons were produced by Kazatomprom, a state-owned holding company. Kazatomprom also represents Kazakhstan in the joint ventures with Russian Tekhsnabexport, French AREVA and Canadian Cameco.

All of produced uranium is going for export as the country's only nuclear power plant in Aqtua was shut down in June 1999. There is a plan to build a new 1,500 MW nuclear plant in the southeast of Kazakhstan, near Lake Balkash.