Page 10 - FSUOGM Week 27 2019

FSUOGM PIPELINES & TRANSPORT FSUOGM
CPC slashes forecast for 2019 oil transport
KAZAKHSTAN
CPC will start paying dividends in either 2020 or 2021.
THE Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) expects to ow 1.3mn barrels per day of crude oil this year, marking a 6.5% yr/yr increase but a lower volume than it initially anticipated.
e consortium, which manages a 1,511-km pipeline that serves as the main westward export route for Kazakh oil, also plans to start paying dividends next year, a er recently wrapping up a costly expansion project.
Under CPC’s initial plan drawn up in Decem- ber and based on shipper’s booking, the com- pany expected to handle 67.7mn tonnes (1.36mn bpd) of oil exports this year, based on shippers’ booking, which is slightly more than its nomi- nal capacity of 1.35mn bpd. A er factoring in transport volumes in the rst six months of this year, CPC has now slashed its forecast to 65.1mn tonnes (1.3mn bpd).
e pipeline company anticipates receiving 1.16mn bpd of Kazakh oil, including 600,000bpd from the Tengiz projects, 309,000bpd from Kashagan and 205,000bpd from Karachaganak. It should get a further 24,800bpd from smaller fields in Kazakhstan, along with 149,000bpd from Russian elds.
e CPC pipeline runs from western Kazakh- stan to Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, where oil is loaded onto tankers for shipments across the Mediterranean area. Its main own- ers are Russia’s Transneft with a 31% stake, Kazakhstan’s KazMunayGas (KMG) with 19% and Chevron with 15%, with other sharehold- ers including Lukarco, Rosne -Shell Caspian
Ventures, Mobil Caspian Pipeline, Eni, BG Over- seas and Oryx Caspian Pipeline.
CPC completed a $5.4bn expansion project in April last year, almost doubling its capacity. Addressing reporters on July 3, CEO Nikolai Gorban said the company would begin making dividend payments either in October-December 2020 or January-March 2021. A decision on the timing will be made at an annual general meet- ing (AGM) of shareholders, scheduled to take place in September or sooner.
“ e dividend policy has been developed,” he said.
According to Gorban, the company’s out- standing debts to shareholders totalled less than $2bn at the start of January, of which $1.4bn will need to be paid this year, and the remainder by September 2020. CPC will also invest $600mn in an additional expansion project, enabling the pipeline to pump up to 72.5mn per year (1.46mn bpd) of Kazakh oil.
He added that the company had increased its monitoring of oil quality following the con- tamination of millions of barrels of oil with organic chlorides at the Druzhba pipeline in late April.
“Our system was not damaged, as it is iso- lated and has no contact points with Transne ’s system,” he told reporters. “As for chlorides, we check oil every ten days, as envisaged by the reg- ulatory documents. Of course, when the inci- dent happened, I ordered for checks to be done more o en.”™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 27 09•July•2019