Azernews.Az

Transporting five to seven million tons of oil per year from Kazakhstan's massive Kashagan field through Azerbaijan will be possible from 2013, Azerbaijani Energy Minister Natig Aliyev has said.

About $33 billion has already been invested in tapping the Kashagan field in the Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea. Up to 50 million tons of oil a year will be produced during the first stage of Kashagan development. During the second stage, scheduled for 2018-2019, up to 75 million tons of oil per year will be extracted.

Kashagan’s projected oil reserves are at least 10 billion tons and gas reserves exceed 1 trillion cubic meters.

Aliyev told an event dedicated to Kazakhstan’s independence day in Baku Thursday that Kashagan oil will be transported within the framework of the Trans-Caspian oil transportation system, which is part of the Kazakhstan-Caspian Transportation System (KCTS).

The KCTS project aims to export Kazakh oil -- produced mainly from the Kashagan and Tengiz fields -- across the Caspian to world markets through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, as well as other oil transportation systems in Azerbaijan and other transit states.

In late 2008 Azerbaijani and Kazakh state energy firms SOCAR and KazMunaiGas signed an agreement on establishing a trans-Caspian system, which initially envisions transportation of Kashagan oil through the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus region to world markets.