Azernews.Az

The design capacity of the Kartaly-Astana gas pipeline will be cut by half, Novosti-Kazakhstan reported with the reference to Kazakh Sovereign Wealth Fund Samruk-Kazyna's deputy head Kuandyk Bishimbayev on Thursday.

The construction of the Kartaly - Astana pipeline is scheduled to start in 2013. The pipeline will run from Russian Kartaly through Kazakh Kokshetau and Kostanay to Astana. The pipeline will supply Russian gas to Kazakh city of Astana.

"Not all documents on Kostanay-Astana pipeline project [Kartaly-Astana pipeline section] have been prepared yet. Immediately after the meeting here in the Senate, an investment committee meeting will take place in Samruk-Kazyna where we will examine the updated feasibility study of short-cut version of this pipeline," Bishimbayev said at the Government Hour in the Senate.

Bishimbayev added that an updated feasibility study of the project envisages a double reduction of pipeline capacity due to insufficient number of gas consumers and condition of the regional distribution networks.

"Thus, according to the previous feasibility study, the gas pipeline envisaged transportation of 6 billion cubic meters of gas. Now the project was reduced to 3 billion cubic meters of gas," Bishimbayev said.

Earlier Kazakh Prime Minister Serik Akhmetov said that the pipeline cost will be roughly 215 billion tenge (1$ =150.49 tenge).