Kazakhstan’s oil has one exit, and it is in the Black Sea

Kazakhstan’s oil economy has one maritime chokepoint that matters more than any strait: a set of offshore moorings a few kilometres off the Russian coast near Novorossiysk. Most of the country’s crude reaches the world through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s Black Sea terminal, and 2026 has shown that the terminal can be closed by events Astana does not control. The alternatives are real but small. For the next several years, Kazakhstan’s export security will depend less on building new routes than on keeping this one open.

One terminal, most of the barrels

The CPC pipeline runs about 1,510 kilometres from the Tengiz field in western Kazakhstan to the marine terminal, where tankers load at single point moorings offshore. The consortium reported a record 70.52 million tonnes transshipped in 2025 and set a target of at least 72 million tonnes for 2026. Its general director, Nikolai Gorban, told Interfax in May that the system had "long been technically ready to transship over 80 million tonnes of oil per year". Capacity is not the constraint.

Kazakh oil makes up more than 80 per cent of what the pipeline carries. The Astana Times, citing the consortium, put Kazakh volumes at around 63 million tonnes in 2025, with Tengiz supplying 36.6 million tonnes, Kashagan 17 million and Karachaganak 9.2 million. Those three fields are the core of the country’s output, and all three are tied to a single loading point on a sea at war.

How big the dependence is depends on who is counting

Reports disagree on the share of Kazakhstan’s exports that goes through CPC. Euronews and the Times of Central Asia use "80 per cent" or "over 80 per cent". The Astana Times article on 2025 volumes said "more than two-thirds". The gap is probably one of definition rather than fact: whether the denominator is crude only or crude and condensate, whether it counts shipments to China and to Russian refineries as exports, and which year’s volumes are used. None of the sources we checked sets out its method. Our reading is that the lower figure is a floor and the higher one is closer to the operational reality, because the oil that does not go through CPC is mostly committed to routes that cannot quickly take more.

What 2026 showed

The terminal’s vulnerability was established before this year. After a maritime drone attack in late November 2025 damaged one of its two working berths, CPC exports in January fell to about 440,000 barrels per day, the lowest in seven years, according to a Bloomberg analysis reported on 18 February. A replacement berth came into service on 25 January. The telling number was what Kazakhstan managed to move elsewhere: about 25,000 barrels per day more in January than in November, around 6 per cent of the drop in CPC flows. Volumes via Atyrau–Samara, the Atasu–Alashankou line to China and the port of Aktau rose from 1.22 million tonnes in November to 1.36 million tonnes in January.

July tested the terminal again, this time through the ships. Between 18 and 21 July four tankers were hit by drones: the Nordic Zenith while sailing empty towards the terminal, the Asia and the Nissos Ios while loading, and the Nelsa at mooring SPM-1, where 22 crew were evacuated. Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry called the attacks "an unacceptable infringement upon economic interests". Loadings stopped for a week and restarted on 27 July. Three days later the Nissos Sifnos was hit while loading and the Marathi was struck while waiting for a berth about 11 kilometres offshore. The Times of Central Asia counted at least eight tankers hit near the terminal during July, and loadings were halted again.

The effect on production was immediate, because oil that cannot leave has nowhere to go once storage fills. National output of oil and condensate fell to about one million barrels per day on 26 July, less than half the June average of 2.16 million. Tengiz dropped from 925,000 barrels per day to about 406,000. Kazakhstan’s own fields were shut in by attacks on ships flying Liberian, Marshall Islands and Cameroonian flags, off another country’s coast, in a war it is not party to.

The alternatives, in proportion

The route that avoids Russian territory runs by tanker from Aktau across the Caspian to Azerbaijan and into the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline. Kazakhstan sent about 1.2 million tonnes that way in 2025 and 704,000 tonnes in the first half of 2026, according to AzerNews. The government’s 2026 target is 1.5 to 2.2 million tonnes. At the top of that range, BTC would carry roughly 3 per cent of what CPC carried for Kazakhstan last year.

The limits here are physical and maritime. Aktau needs dredging because the Caspian has dropped by around two metres over two decades, so tankers leave the port lighter than they were designed to sail. There are not enough tankers on the Caspian to move much larger volumes. Every tonne shipped this way also passes through two ports and three transit countries, each with its own tariff. The other options run north through Russia to Samara or east to China. When the January disruption hit, all of them together absorbed about 6 per cent of the loss.

This does not make diversification pointless. It makes it insurance with a small payout. A Caspian route of two or three million tonnes a year keeps some oil moving in a crisis and gives Astana a bargaining position. It does not replace a 70-million-tonne pipeline, and no plan published so far claims it will this decade.

A security arrangement Kazakhstan did not negotiate

The only thing that eased the July crisis was political. On 7 August, Bloomberg reported a US official’s account that Ukraine had agreed not to target the CPC terminal or vessels that are "not sanctioned by Ukraine, do not carry Russian cargo and are not owned by Russian individuals or entities". Kyiv set up contact points through which shipping companies could share vessel details. The same report noted that earlier no-target lists had not stopped some listed ships from being hit.

This is a thin basis for the export route of a country producing around two million barrels a day. The arrangement was reached between Washington and Kyiv, not with Astana. It depends on the tanker, the cargo and the owner being checked correctly, on a terminal that also handles Russian crude, next to Russian naval and oil infrastructure that remains a target. And it lasts only as long as US interest in Kazakh barrels, and the companies that produce them, outweighs other priorities in Washington’s dealings with Ukraine.

What to watch

Three indicators will say whether the chokepoint is stabilising. The first is monthly CPC loadings against the 72-million-tonne plan: any month well below six million tonnes signals a problem at sea, not in the pipeline. The second is whether shipowners and insurers keep sending tonnage to the terminal after the August understanding, since a terminal that is open but that owners avoid is effectively closed. The third is Aktau: whether dredging and new Caspian tankers lift BTC volumes above the 2.2-million-tonne top of this year’s target. If they do not, Kazakhstan’s answer to the Black Sea problem will remain what it was in July, which is to cut production and wait.

Sources

• Interfax — Caspian Pipeline Consortium plans to increase oil transshipment to 72 mln tonnes in 2026, 19 May 2026
• The Astana Times — Around 63 Million Tons of Kazakh Oil Transported via CPC Pipeline in 2025, February 2026
• LIGA.net (citing Bloomberg) — Kazakhstan was able to divert only a small part of the oil from the CPC terminal, 18 February 2026
• Euronews — Four drone strikes in four days hit tankers carrying Kazakhstan’s oil, 21 July 2026
• The Times of Central Asia — CPC Halts Oil Loadings Again After Two More Tankers Attacked Near Novorossiysk, 30 July 2026
• The Times of Central Asia — Kazakhstan Resumes CPC Oil Exports After Output More Than Halves, 7 August 2026
• AzerNews — Drone strike puts Kazakhstan’s oil exports at risk: Astana seeks sustainable plan, 29 July 2026
• Investing.com (Bloomberg) — Ukraine agrees to avoid targeting some tankers and Black Sea oil infrastructure, 7 August 2026