Chinese companies produce over 25% of oil in Kazakhstan
"Chinese companies are among the most active players in the oil sector of Kazakhstan, they produce more than 25% of oil in Kazakhstan. A new company, Sinopec Group, has come to the market now, it bought out the assets of Lukoil in Kazakhstan. Moreover, their activity is only limited by the capacity of our pipelines," T. Kulibayev told.
According to him, the capacity of the pipeline to China is 12 million tons.
"In whole, we understand that we could expand the pipeline to China to 20 million tons. Speaking of the conditions, I can assure you that both sides are interested and motivated. China is a great market for us because we are neighboring countries without any transit countries. On the other hand, this is too big of a market and it depends on the import that's why China intends to develop cooperation with Kazakhstan in terms of hydrocarbons supplies. Obviously, we are also interested in that cooperation because all of our neighbor countries - Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Iran are oil or gas producing countries, and we cannot export our products there. The market of Europe does not grow in terms of production, therefore cooperation with China is one of the priority directions for us," T. Kulibayev said.