KazMunayGas (KMG) is considering the possibility of building a shipyard at the Caspian Sea, according to Yerbolat Mendybayev, head of the company’s department for transportation and logistics.
«On December 2, 2023, KMG and ADP (Abu Dhabi Ports Group) signed an agreement of principles related to establishing a ship repair facility and a shipyard in Kazakhstan. Now, we are creating a working group on the issue. We are going to examine all shipyards in our country and then we will prepare a development plan,” he told the press service of the company.
Mendybayev also noted that members of the working group are going to visit a set of ship repair facilities operating near the city of Aktau.
«Once the working group gathers all the necessary information, we will have a clear understanding of what we need for further development and construction of not just a ship repair facility but a shipyard. Some companies in Aktau can repair ships but none of them can build a tanker or ferry or bulk carrier,» he said.
Caspian Integrated Maritime Solutions (CIMS), a joint venture by KMG and Abu Dhabi Ports Group has already acquired tankers for use on the Caspian Sea. They are under the control of Kazmortransflot, another subsidiary of KMG. All new ships, however, will be run by CIMS directly.
In September 2023, Magzum Mirzagaliyev, head of KMG, announced that CIMS plans to boost its tanker fleet by up to ten ships.
CIMS was registered at the Astana International Financial Center in early 2023. In July 2023, the company purchased two tankers Taraz and Liwa with a deadweight of 8,000 tons each. They are going to be used to export Kazakhstani oil to Azerbaijan via the Caspian Sea for further transporting via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. KMG plans to export 1.5 million tons of oil through this route per year. The route via Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey allows Kazakhstan to export its oil bypassing Russia, where it faced some problems with transporting oil through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, the key export for the country so far.
