Kazakhstan starts dredging Aktau as falling Caspian levels cap its only westward alternative

Kazakhstan's Ministry of Transport announced on 5 October 2026 that main dredging operations had begun in the water area of the port of Aktau, the country's principal Caspian harbour. Trend reported the ministry's figures: about 1.3 million cubic metres of material to be removed, a resulting depth of 6 to 7 metres in the port basin, and completion scheduled for the end of 2026. The ministry expects the work to lift cargo volumes along the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route by up to 30 per cent and to reduce the cost of maritime carriage by 10 to 15 per cent. The announcement reads as routine infrastructure maintenance. It is not. Aktau is being deepened because the sea around it is retreating, and because every plan Kazakhstan has for moving oil and containers westward without crossing Russian territory begins at this quay.

What the ministry has contracted for

The dredging is the first phase of a project awarded earlier in 2026. Trend reported in June that China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd. is the general contractor, that it had completed geodetic surveys and processed the data needed for implementation, and that main works were then scheduled for the second half of July. The October announcement confirms the start of those works. The stated purpose is navigational: a 6 to 7 metre draught in the port's waters allows vessels to operate at full load rather than part-loaded, which is where the cost saving comes from. The ministry frames the project as one driver of a planned increase in Trans-Caspian corridor capacity from 6 million to 10 million tonnes a year by 2028.

Aktau does not stand alone in the programme. Transport Minister Nurlan Sauranbayev told parliamentary hearings in the Senate in April that the combined throughput capacity of Aktau and Kuryk would rise from 21 million to 30 million tonnes, according to Trend. Kuryk, 70 kilometres south, has had its own dredging and terminal works. Flows are moving: Trend reported that freight along the Trans-Caspian route rose 22 per cent in January to August 2026, with east-west transit up 55 per cent. Those are percentages, not tonnages, and the ministry has not published a comparable absolute figure for the period.

Dredging against a falling sea

The reason the basin needs 1.3 million cubic metres taken out of it is that the water above it is going. Euronews reported on 7 October, citing the Kazakh Research Institute of the Caspian Sea, that the level in Kazakhstan's sector fell from -26.82 metres in 1996 to -29.27 metres in 2025, and that the average at the Kulaly Island station stood at -29.42 metres in July 2026, the lowest in the whole monitoring record. That is roughly 2.45 metres over three decades. Euronews also reported that the water-covered area in the studied north-eastern sector shrank by about 16,384 square kilometres between 2000 and 2025, and that new islands have surfaced, one of them around a kilometre long.

Kazakhstan's own projections are worse than the trend to date. The Astana Times reported in March, citing the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, that the 2025 average stood at -29.35 metres on the Baltic height system, that the shoreline had retreated 30 to 35 kilometres in places between 2006 and 2025, and that official scenarios run to -32.4 metres by 2050 in the optimistic case and -34 metres in the pessimistic one. The ministry attributes the decline to climate change, increased evaporation, reduced river inflow and economic activity. Kazakhstan set up the Caspian research institute in 2025 to monitor it. On those numbers, a one-off deepening to 6 or 7 metres is a holding action; the dredge will have to come back.

Why the quay depth now binds

The strategic weight of Aktau's draught comes from what has happened to the alternative. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which runs from western Kazakhstan to Novorossiysk, carried 64.8 million tonnes of Kazakh crude in 2025 on figures reported by the Astana Times on 6 October, and more than four-fifths of the country's oil exports on the account given by the Times of Central Asia. Al Jazeera put the share at 80 per cent. Interfax reported that CPC shipped 33.35 million tonnes in the first half of 2026, down 7.4 per cent year on year, against a consortium plan of 72 million tonnes for the year. Al Jazeera reported on 26 July that Kazakhstan cut production after drone strikes blamed on Ukraine shut the Black Sea terminal, and that the consortium temporarily suspended shipments.

That is the context for the export study now in front of the producers. The Times of Central Asia reported on 7 October that a working group representing eight shareholders in the Tengiz and Kashagan fields has commissioned a feasibility study on moving crude from the Atyrau area to Aktau, across the Caspian to Baku and onward through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, with the report due to shareholders in November. The two options under study, a subsea pipeline or a much larger tanker fleet, are each sized at up to 35 million tonnes a year. The gap between ambition and present practice is the point: the Astana Times put Kazakh volumes through BTC at about 1.2 million tonnes a year, and the Times of Central Asia reported 1.3 million tonnes railed from Aktau towards BTC in 2025.

A tanker-based route of 35 million tonnes would need berths, draught and loading capacity at Aktau on a different order from what the port has, and a subsea line would still need the Kazakh end built and dredged. The October works buy depth for vessels at full load on existing trade. They do not create a crude export terminal. The sequencing matters for anyone reading the November study: the shareholders will be costing a Caspian crossing whose western shore is Azerbaijani infrastructure and whose eastern shore is a port Kazakhstan is currently paying a Chinese contractor to keep navigable against a sea that official scenarios have falling another three to five metres by 2050.

Sources

• Trend — Kazakhstan's Aktau Port starts dredging works to boost TITR capacity by 30%
• Trend — Kazakhstan to complete Aktau Port dredging by end-2026
• Trend — Kazakhstan to boost Aktau, Kuryk port capacity to 30 million tons
• Trend — Middle Corridor freight volume rises in Jan-Aug 2026
• Euronews — The Caspian Sea has been shrinking for decades. Now a new island has emerged
• The Astana Times — Kazakhstan Reports Caspian Sea Level Decline, Outlines 2050 Scenarios
• The Astana Times — Where Kazakhstan's Oil Goes: Key Export Markets and Volumes
• Interfax — Caspian Pipeline Consortium's oil transportation down 7.4% in H1 2026 to 33.35 mln tonnes
• The Times of Central Asia — Kazakhstan Weighs a Second Major Oil Export Route
• Al Jazeera — 'Freeze the conflict': Drones slow Kazakh oil flow amid Russia-Ukraine war