The resumption of production occurred after TCO confirmed the successful launch of the electricity distribution system. The company's press release states that production volumes will gradually increase depending on the conditions at the field.
Information about the resumption of operations was announced shortly after Prime Minister Olzhas Bektanov met with Peter Larden, Senior Vice President of ExxonMobil, one of TCO's shareholders. During the discussion, the parties addressed issues of cooperation in the oil and gas sector and joint projects, and the Prime Minister expressed concern about the consequences of the accident and emphasized the need for urgent measures to address them, as reported by the government press service on January 26.
The fire at Tengiz occurred on January 18 at two transformers of the GTES-4 substation. Personnel were evacuated, and the fire was successfully extinguished. However, no official information has yet been provided regarding the causes of the incident. The day after the incident, TCO announced the suspension of oil production at the Tengiz and Korolev fields due to power supply issues.
The Tengiz field, located in the Atyrau region, is considered the largest in Kazakhstan and is situated 350 km southeast of the city of Atyrau. The Korolev field is located just 20 km northeast of Tengiz. Both fields are developed by TCO, in which 50% of the shares belong to Chevron, 25% to Exxon Mobil, 20% to KazMunayGas, and 5% to the Russian company Lukoil.
The majority of the oil produced by TCO is exported through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC); however, due to damage to the infrastructure of the marine terminal in Southern Ozerievka (near Novorossiysk), part of the crude was redirected to alternative routes. At the end of November last year, the terminal was attacked by drones, which led to the failure of the offshore mooring device VPU-2. This attack coincided with the repair of the third offshore mooring device, negatively impacting the export of Kazakh oil.
Currently, the CPC has completed the repair of VPU-3, which lasted from mid-November, and is already loading oil from two of the three offshore mooring points.
