Kazakhstan boosts oil exports to China amid attacks on CPC
Kazakhstan’s oil shipments to China via the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline totaled 863,000 tons in the first eight months of the year, up 24% from the same period last year, according to KazTransOil (KTO), a subsidiary of KazMunayGas responsible for oil transportation. Meanwhile, oil shipments via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, another export route bypassing Russia, increased by 12%.
Despite serving as one of Kazakhstan’s oil export routes, the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline is primarily used to transport Russian oil through Kazakhstan to China. The annual transit volume currently stands at 10 million tons, with plans to increase it to 12.5 million tons.
Meanwhile, oil loaded onto tankers at the port of Aktau using KTO facilities totaled 2.4 million tons between January and August, up 6% from the same period in 2025. Oil shipments via the BTC pipeline increased by 12% to 1 million tons.
Overall, the consolidated volume of oil and petroleum products transported through the KTO pipeline system in the first eight months of 2026 amounted to 31.9 million tons, up 4% year on year.
In addition, KTO transported 12.1 million tons of oil to domestic refineries, including 3.6 million tons to the Atyrau Oil Refinery, 3.7 million tons to PetroKazakhstan Oil Products in Shymkent, 4.3 million tons to the Pavlodar Petrochemical Plant and 540,000 tons to the Caspi Bitum LLP joint venture.
The volume of oil transported through the Atyrau-Samara section of the Uzen-Atyrau-Samara main oil pipeline totaled 6.9 million tons, an increase of 2% year-on-year. The TON-2 pipeline transported another 8.1 million tons of oil in the first eight months of 2026, up 5% from the same period last year.
At the same time, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) has reported several aerial and maritime drone attacks on its facilities. The attacks have damaged infrastructure at the CPC marine terminal near Novorossiysk, Russia, as well as tankers traveling to the terminal to load Kazakh oil. The CPC route accounts for approximately 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports.
