Kazakhstan Restarts Production From Its Largest Oilfield

The Kazakh Energy Ministry announced that the country’s largest oil field Tengiz, has resumed production, after project operator Chevron (NYSE:CVX) was forced to halt pumping completely due to disruptions from drone strikes and a generator fire. 

The operator of the field, Chevron-led (CVX.N), opens new tab Tengizchevroil (TCO), temporarily halted production at the Tengiz and Korolev oilfields on January 18 after a fire at a generator triggered a power supply outage. It was unclear what caused the fire.

"Oil output has been restarted and will reach a decent level in a week or so but it's hard to say what's next", an internal source said. Another source said that Tengiz output may reach 670,000 bpd by mid-February, which is close to autumn output levels, but well below the 900,000 bpd the field reached early last year.

The Tengiz field in western Kazakhstan is ranked by Chevron as the world's deepest producing supergiant oilfield, and extracting oil there is technically challenging.