CPC finishes repairs, terminals expected to fully restore operations by week's end

NUR-SULTAN. April 20 (Interfax) - Repairs at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's (CPC) terminals are almost complete and the terminals are expected to fully restore operations by the end of the week, Kazakh Energy Minister Bolat Akchulakov said.

"Repair works are essentially finished. They proceeded with interruptions due to weather conditions," the minister told reporters on Wednesday. The No. 3 single-point mooring (SPM) "will start working fully today," he added.

"By the end of this week, CPC will be fully operational, 100% is supposed to be commissioned. That's two SPM, the third will be under repair, but in principle it was a backup. They always worked with two SPM," Akchulakov said.

The CPC halted oil loading at its terminal in Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea on March 23 due to discovered and possible storm damage to single-point moorings. On March 28, the CPC resumed intake of oil into the Tengiz-Novorossiysk system at minimum productivity, along with loading of tankers through SPM-1.

Repairs to SPM-2 and SPM-3 were expected to take at least three to four weeks. Restoration work was complicated by bad weather. Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry said that the country could lose about 320,000 barrels per day (1.3 million tonnes) of production if repairs took until the end of April.

The country's Finance Ministry estimated that Kazakhstan could suffer more than $330 million in losses from the damage at the CPC terminals.