The Kazakh government is considering building a new oil terminal on the Caspian Sea to handle increased volumes of oil produced in offshore and onshore fields, the government press-service said Thursday. Kazakhstan is already experiencing bottlenecks on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium's Tengiz-Novorossiisk line and therefore wants to develop marine infrastructure more intensively, the press-service quoted Prime Minister Daniel Akhmetov as saying. The new port would be located in Kuryk Bay, close to the giant Kashagan field, which is being developed by an international consortium led by Italy's Eni Spa. The proposed site is also close to Azerbaijan's Samgatel terminal, which is connected to the new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Currently Kazakhstan exports about 40 million tons to 45 million tons of oil a year, the equivalent of 800,000 barrels to 850,000 barrels a day. Of this, some 8 million tons are transported by sea through the port of Aktau on the northeast shore of the Caspian. By 2016, Kazakhstan forecasts Caspian-borne oil exports will increase to 38 million tons a year. Akhmetov said that Kazakhstan also intends to expand Aktau to handle dry cargos.
