82% along a route: Drone incident halts Kazakhstan's oil shipments once again
Central Asia Column “Steppe Ahead”
In 2025, 82% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports were transported via the KTK pipeline to the Black Sea. On September 8, a drone incident once again halted loading operations at the terminal near Novorossiysk—the third disruption this year. Kazakhstan has therefore already lowered its production plan for 2026 from 98 to 96 million metric tons. The search for alternative routes is picking up speed, but remains a numbers game involving small figures.
Third Disruption This Year
The Kazakh Ministry of Energy confirmed the incident on September 10. According to the ministry, loading operations at buoys WPU-2 and WPU-3 were temporarily suspended. Inspections revealed no damage to loading systems or tankers, and loading operations have resumed as normal. There are reportedly no restrictions on Kazakh shippers. This was reported by both the Russian news agency Interfax and the Kazakh economic portal Kapital.kz.
The KTK, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, connects the Tengiz, Kashagan, and Karachaganak fields to the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. In addition to Russia and Kazakhstan, shareholders include Chevron and ExxonMobil. The pipeline transports more than 1% of the world’s oil supply. It is precisely this concentration that makes it a recurring target for Ukrainian drones, as a strike would have an immediate impact on production, export revenues, and the national budget in Astana.
Nevertheless, the toll this year has been steep. Following the attacks in January and July, Kazakhstan lost approximately 3.5 million metric tons in production volume. Energy Minister Erlan Akkenshenov therefore lowered the production target for 2026 from 98 to 96 million metric tons at the end of August. By way of comparison: According to the English-language news portal *The Times of Central Asia*, the KTK consortium transported 64.8 million metric tons of Kazakh oil in 2025, out of total exports of 78.7 million metric tons. At the height of the July attacks, Kazakhstan’s daily production temporarily fell from around 2 million to 1 million barrels.
Alternative routes remain limited
The state-owned company KazMunayGas currently ships about 1.2 million metric tons per year via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. This figure is expected to reach 1.6 million metric tons by 2026; Azerbaijan offers capacity for up to 2.2 million metric tons. According to The Astana Times, 155,000 metric tons were shipped via the port of Aktau on this route in July. Two new tankers, the Taraz and the Liwa, each with a capacity of 8,000 metric tons, are bolstering the Caspian fleet. The scale remains limited, however: even 2.2 million metric tons represent only about 3% of the KTK’s 2025 volume.
The second alternative route also runs through Russia. According to The Astana Times, 9.3 million metric tons flowed through the Atyrau-Samara pipeline in 2025, with a portion of that continuing on to Germany via the Druzhba pipeline. This route therefore does not reduce dependence on Russian transit; it merely shifts it. Meanwhile, the bottlenecks of the Caspian alternative lie in the details: The port of Aktau limits the volumes, and the low-sulfur Kazakh oil loses value in the Azerbaijani blend. The EU plans to provide 10 billion euros in funding for transport routes through Central Asia, but the money will be disbursed over several years.
Akkenshenov is therefore proposing another pipeline. “Kazakhstan urgently needs the Baku-Supsa pipeline as one of its alternative transport routes,” the energy minister said, according to the Kazakh economic portal Inbusiness. The Georgian route has a capacity of up to 5 million metric tons per year. However, formal negotiations with Azerbaijan have not yet begun. In 2025, only 1.1 million metric tons of Kazakh oil flowed directly to China; in the medium term, about 1 million metric tons per year is planned.
Repairs Under Fire
Added to the route issue is a maintenance problem. The Kazakh business newspaper Kursiv reported on September 3 about a Ukrainian attack on the specialized vessel Nefrit off the coast of Sochi. The ship was working on replacing the loading buoys at the KTK terminal. One buoy had been damaged in November 2025; two others date back to 2001 and are scheduled for replacement. Since the attack, the repair schedule has been up in the air.
In the short term, maintenance at the Karachaganak field is also putting downward pressure on volumes. According to sources at the Reuters news agency, KTK exports will drop to around 1.5 million barrels per day in September. For Kazakhstan, this means that the revenue base for the national budget remains dependent on a vulnerable route through Russian territory. The KTK is likely to remain dominant until 2030; even the new tankers will do little to change that. It remains to be seen how insurers and shipping companies will react to any further attacks. As early as July, ships avoided the terminal for days on end. Each of these days results in lost production volume that no alternative route can compensate for.
Three key indicators in the coming weeks will show the direction things are heading: the completion of the buoy replacement at the terminal, the start of formal talks on the Baku-Supsa pipeline, and the export statistics for September. If any of these indicators fails to materialize, the production target of 96 million metric tons will once again be called into question.
Source: The Times of Central Asia, The Astana Times (EN), Interfax, Kapital.kz, Inbusiness, Kursiv (RU)