27 Feb 2023 12:54

Kashagan to start gas processing in 2025 - QazaqGaz

Almaty. Feb 27 (Interfax) - Gas processing at Kashagan will begin in 2025, JSC QazaqGaz CEO for Marketing Arman Kasenov said.

"Initially, the project was carried out by a private organization. In August, it was transferred to QazaqGaz. Much work had been done, a comprehensive audit was conducted, and the work progress sped up. The project is expected to be completed in 2025," Kasenov said at a meeting of the Public Council of Samruk-Kazyna.

It was reported in early February that National Company JSC QazaqGaz had conducted a comprehensive audit of the Gas Processing Plant Project (GPP Project) at Kashagan with the participation of international companies in order to reveal some critical faults in the project.

In the summer of 2022, the management of GPC Investment LLP, the operator of the GPP Project at Kashagan, was transferred to National Company JSC QazaqGaz.

The transfer of the GPP Project to QazaqGaz was followed by financial, technical, and legal audits that revealed critical engineering errors in the design of the project.

Construction of the gas processing plant at Kashagan started in the summer of 2021 in order to boost the output of the Kashagan field to 450,000 barrels of oil per day. The plant is to be commissioned in the fourth quarter of 2023

In December 2021, National Company QazaqGaz, formerly KazTransGas, and the Kashagan project operator North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC) signed an agreement to enter the Kashagan Phase 2A front-end engineering design phase, which provides for an increase in the gas processing capacity. The project provides for the construction of a new gas processing plant with capacity of up to 2 billion cubic meters a year, in addition to the ongoing project aimed at building the plant with a processing capacity of 1 billion cubic meters a year.

Kashagan is Kazakhstan's first offshore oil and gas field in the Caspian Sea. It is the largest international investment project in the country. Commercial operation at Kashagan began on November 1, 2016.