CPC Caspian Pipeline Consortium

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) is an international joint-stock company that built and operates the CPC oil pipeline, which connects the fields of West Kazakhstan with the Russian Black Sea coast. The length of the oil pipeline is 1510 km.

The capacity of the first stage is 28.2 million tons of oil per year, including 22 million tons of oil of Caspian origin. Full capacity was achieved by mid-2004. In November 2004, CPC began receiving Russian oil at the Kropotka NPS in the Krasnodar Territory. Initially, the project was developed with the expectation that its initial throughput capacity would be increased to 67 million tons of oil per year.

The shareholders of the joint venture are Rosneft, through the joint venture Rosneft Shell Caspian Ventures Ltd. (Rosneft owns 51% of the shares) and Shell (49% of the shares).

History

2022: Suspension of activities due to environmental violations with blocking of Kazakh oil supplies to Europe

In early July 2022, the Novorossiysk District Court decided to suspend the activities of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) for 30 days after the discovery of environmental violations, the company will appeal this decision.

The beauty of this move from Russia's point of view is that the flow that will be reduced is not Russian oil that can be redirected elsewhere, but oil from neighboring Kazakhstan. Almost 1.5 million barrels per day of oil supplies can be removed from an already tense market with virtually no costs for Russia.

President of Kazakhstan Tokayev spoke in favor of diversifying the supply of Kazakh oil, he named the Trans-Caspian route, which bypasses Russia, as a priority. Tokayev called on American investors of the Tengiz project (Chevron and ExxonMobil) to help with this.

A significant share of oil (about 50-60% as of November 2022), which is loaded in the port of Novorossiysk, is not Russian, but Kazakhstani, transported to the Black Sea through the Transneft pipeline system and loaded onto tankers from the dedicated terminal of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).