Kazakhstan Oil Production

The big three fields

• Tengiz, on the north-east shore of the Caspian Sea, is Kazakhstan's largest field. It is run by Tengizchevroil: Chevron 50%, ExxonMobil 25%, KazMunayGas 20% and LukArco 5%. The Future Growth Project produced first oil on 24 January 2025 and adds about 260,000 b/d at full capacity. Two generator fires in January 2026 cut Tengiz output by nearly 20% before it recovered in March.
• Kashagan, offshore in the shallow northern Caspian, is operated by the NCOC consortium, whose partners include KazMunayGas, Eni, Shell, TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil, CNPC and Inpex. It is one of the largest oil discoveries of recent decades, but it started production only in 2016 after long delays.
• Karachaganak, in the north-west near the Russian border, produces mainly gas condensate.

The Atyrau region, home to Tengiz and Kashagan, produced 62.5% of Kazakh oil in 2025. All three projects are led by Western majors under long-term contracts, which limits the government's ability to cut output when OPEC+ asks.

The CPC pipeline and CPC Blend

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) line runs about 1,510 km from Tengiz to a marine terminal near Novorossiysk on Russia's Black Sea coast. It can carry up to 72.5 million tonnes a year from Kazakhstan, and it shipped a record 70.5 million tonnes in 2025. Tengiz, Kashagan and Karachaganak all export through it. Smaller volumes go by rail and tanker, through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline, and by pipeline to China.

The mixed export stream is CPC Blend, a light crude loaded on tankers at three single-point moorings. Price reporting agencies assess it as a differential to Dated Brent, and it is one of the largest light crude streams in the Mediterranean. Because it crosses Russia, CPC Blend is not sanctioned, but it is exposed to the war between Russia and Ukraine:

• 17 February 2025: drones hit the Kropotkinskaya pumping station, and Russia said flows fell by up to 40%.
• 29 November 2025: Ukrainian sea drones badly damaged mooring buoy SPM-2 while SPM-3 was under maintenance, leaving one buoy in use. Kazakh output fell about 6% in early December.
• 2026: tankers near the terminal were hit in January and July, and Russia reported damage to a mooring point and storage tanks on 6 April. In July CPC stopped taking Kazakh oil for a time because terminal tanks were full, and producers cut output. CPC shipments fell 7.4% in the first half of 2026 to 33.3 million tonnes.

For how the 2026 disruptions affected world prices, see what moves oil prices; for the Russian side, see the Russia oil production page.

Kazakhstan and OPEC+ quotas

Kazakhstan joined the OPEC+ Declaration of Cooperation in 2016 and has been its most persistent over-producer. When Tengiz expanded in 2025, output rose far above the target: in March 2025 Kazakhstan produced about 2.17 million b/d of crude and condensate against a quota of about 1.49 million b/d. The energy ministry said in May 2025 that it would not cut production, while promising to compensate for past over-production.

Under pressure from Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan submitted compensation schedules that rose from about 131,000 b/d of extra cuts in December 2025 to 669,000 b/d by June 2026. In practice, the CPC outages and Tengiz fires did more to reduce Kazakh output in 2026 than the quota did. Kazakhstan's target rose to 1.608 million b/d from July 2026, and it was one of the seven countries that met on 6 September 2026 and held targets steady for October. Even after the 2026 drop, output of about 1.86 million b/d remained well above that target. Read our OPEC+ explainer for how quotas and compensation work.

For oil prices, Kazakhstan matters in two ways: its over-production strained OPEC+ cohesion during 2025, when the group began unwinding its cuts, and the CPC route is a supply risk alongside the Strait of Hormuz. Live prices for the benchmark it is priced against are on the Brent crude oil price page.