Kazakhstan's foreign partners in developing the Kashagan oilfield will pay almost $1 billion this year and next to cover the state's portion of investment in the world's biggest oil discovery in 40 years, the oil and gas minister said.
Consortium members, including Eni, ExxonMobil and Shell, agreed last week to fund the investment share of state oil and gas company KazMunaiGas to bring the first phase of Kashagan into production by June 2013.
"For the consortium, this will be in the region of $986 million in 2012 and 2013," Kazakh Oil and Gas Minister Sauat Mynbayev told reporters.
"Cash generated from the start of commercial production will be enough to service operating activities," he said.
A more assertive Kazakhstan, the largest economy in Central Asia and second only to Russia among former Soviet oil producers, has sought in recent years to revise deals struck with foreign energy companies in the lean post-Soviet years.
The country, four times the size of Texas and home to three percent of the world's recoverable oil reserves, has also moved to exert greater management control and secure bigger revenues from foreign-owned oil and gas developments.
Development of the Kashagan field, the biggest oil discovery since Prudhoe Bay in Alaska in the 1960s, has been beset by delays, rising costs and technical complications since it was declared commercially viable 10 years ago.
Kazakhstan expects the 9 billion-barrel field in the Caspian Sea to be the main driver of its plans to raise oil output by 60 percent by the end of the decade from 80 million tonnes in 2011.
The first phase of production at Kashagan is scheduled to begin by the end of 2012 or early 2013, with output of between 370,000 barrels per day that could subsequently rise to 450,000 barrels per day.
North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC), the consortium developing the field, said in a statement on May 23 that its members had agreed on an amendment to the Kashagan development plan and budget. It gave no details of the investment required.
