The press service of the Kazakh Ministry of Energy has recently announced plans to carry out additional exploration works in the Kurmangazy oil field located in the Caspian Sea, The Astana Times reports.

According to the statement, the abandoned wells are going to be re-monitored and proposals on additional extraction work in the field to be scheduled soon. It was also announced that no production activities, including drilling and seismic surveys, were implemented in the Kurmangazy oil field during 2015.

The field was developed on the basis of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) type contract concluded between the KazMunayTeniz and Rosneft companies. Two exploration wells were drilled in the field in 2006 and 2009. Both didn’t reveal any signs of oil despite the positive preliminary forecast, which evaluated the Kurmangazy deposit as promising and able to expose billions of tonnes of oil reserves. After that, it was decided to close the project.

The ministry, however, noted that the decision to stop the project hasn’t been made on the governmental level between Kazakhstan and Russia so that the contract remains in force. During an intergovernmental commission meeting in 2014, the parties came to the decision to resume exploration works.

The Kurmangazy probable reserves’ estimates 2.8 billion tonnes of standard fuel, which is to be found in deep-Paleozoic sediments. Such exploration works are usually associated with high risks.

Photo: www.m-astana.kz