Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

Full resumption of oil production at Kazakhstan's giant Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea is expected at the end of 2015.

This was announced by French Total's President of the Exploration & Production Division and Gas & Power Yves-Louis Darricarrère at the CIS Oil and Gas summit in Paris, RIA-Novosti reported on April 22.

"Now the main issue is the resumption of the production as soon as possible. The studying of the causes [of leaks] is approaching the end," he said.

The Kashagan field with recoverable oil reserves - estimated at 11 billion barrels - is believed to be the largest oil field in the world after Prudo Bay in Alaska. Besides, natural gas reserves are estimated at over 1 trillion cubic meters.

The oil production in the field started on September 11, 2013. However the operations had to be stopped on September 24, due to a gas leak in the onshore section of the gas pipeline running from Island D to the Bolashak onshore processing facility.

The Department of Emergency Situations was immediately briefed on the regulations. Production was resumed, but stopped again on October 9 after a detection of a gas leak.

The North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC), the operator of the North Caspian Sea Project (Kashagan field), said earlier that the results of the examination of the steel pipeline samples of the field will be ready in April.

"It is expected that the results of analysis of the steel samples - which are being conducted in the laboratory of TWI and other specialized laboratories in France and Italy- will be ready in April 2014," the consortium said.