Gearing up to shift offshore

Oil production is booming in Kazakhstan, which has been more successful in attracting foreign oil investors than other former-Soviet republics. Output is expected to climb from 47m tonnes in 2002 to reach 50m-52m tonnes this year. Ambitious targets call for production to rise to 100m tonnes in 2010 and to 150m tonnes in 2015, writes Isabel Gorst

SINCE 1991, Kazakhstan has relied on fields discovered during the Soviet era to provide growing volumes of oil and gas. But the coming decade will see a new oil province opening in the northeast Caspian Sea, where huge reserves await development. Kazakhstan has the lion's share of offshore Caspian reserves. Shell estimates the area holds 3.3bn tonnes of oil, more than half the 5.5bn tonnes said to lie offshore. Gas reserves in the northeast amount to around 140 trillion cubic feet (cf), a large slice of the total 450 trillion cf estimated for the Caspian as a whole. This year, the government approved a three-phase programme for Caspian development, anticipating over $30bn of investment in th