(AFP, ALMATY) - Western oil majors confirmed on Monday the first oil discovery in the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, in what has been described as one of the world's largest offshore oil fields.
Kazakhstan hopes the discovery will catapult it into the top five oil producing countries.
The Offshore Kazakhstan International Operating Company (OKIOC) said it was "encouraged" by the data it had received from the East Kashagan field, located 75 kilometers (45 miles) off Atyrau in western Kazakhstan.
The consortium said the first well had tested 600 cubic meters of oil per day and 200,000 cubic meters of gas per day and that oil gravity ranged between 42 and 44 degrees API, which would suggest a light, sweet crude.
"We hope that continued exploration and appraisal drilling will further support these initial results," said OKIOC General Manager Keith Dallard in a statement about the oil discovery.
Speculation has been mounting about the size of reserves at the East Kashagan offshore oil field. OKIOC had warned against premature estimates about the new field's potential value.
Kazakh officials said earlier this month that East Kashagan could hold at least seven billion tonnes (some 50 billion barrels) of oil.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev hailed the find as one of the largest fields of oil and gas in the world to be recently discovered and said the Central Asian country would become one of the world's top five oil producers.
Nazarbayev said the offshore Caspian field was six times larger than the country's important Tengiz onshore fields, one of the 10 largest in the world and is estimated to contain six to nine billion barrels of oil.
But the OKIOC consortium has been much more prudent about the potential value of the new oil field, saying it has only drilled one well in a structure some 75 kilometers long.
"At this stage the company feels it is unable to make any statement about reserves until we have been able to drill some more wells and get more information," said OKIOC spokesman Matthew Bateson.
He said the consortium had one more test to complete and then it would move on to the Kashagan West field, situated 40 kilometers from East Kashagan.
Analysts said the announcement from the OKIOC consortium was encouraging and suggested the region could become an increasingly important oil producer, but that it was too early to say anything definite.
In May, OKIOC extended drilling at the first exploration well in the East Kashagan field to a depth of 5,000 meters (165,000 feet) from 4,500 meters.
The consortium unites subsidiaries of ENI, BG, BP Amoco, ExxonMobil, pex, Phillips Petroleum, Shell, Statoil and TotalFinaElf.
Kazakhstan, a landlocked country of around 15 million people, currently exports almost all of its oil through Russia.
The news of the oil discovery is likely to spark renewed interest among states including the United States, Russia, China and Iran that are pushing pipeline proposals as they vie for influence in the region.
Kazakhstan has come under heavy pressure from the United States to support a US-backed link to take Caspian crude from Baku to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, avoiding Russia in the north and Iran in the south.
by Denise Albrighton
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
