Kazakhstan to transform from an importer of gasoline to an exporter
Kazakhstan plans to enter the club of gasoline exporters and to begin deliveries of gasoline to neighboring countries in autumn 2018. It despites the fact that all these years Astana imported gasoline AI-92 from Russia. To become an exporter of gasoline, Kazakhstan is ready even to ban temporary the import of gasoline from Russia. The reason for this is trivial: a significant surplus of gasoline due to increasing capacity of Kazakhstan oil refineries. Kazakhstan has three major oil refineries: Atyrau, Shymkent and Pavlodar. Pavlodar refinery has already completed its modernization program. Atyrau refinery plans to launch new units by June, while Shymkent is expected to wrap up a modernization in September. The refining capacity of all the three plants will increase from 13.8 to 16.5 million tons after modernization of the refinery completes. The refineries plan to increase their oil products throughput to 15.3 million tons this year, from 14.2 million tons last year. Therefore, Kazakh oil refiners are afraid that at this rate, by October this year, there will be no place to store produced gasoline. However, the procedure to sell abroad is not easy. There is a ban on export of light oil products, including gasoline, to the country up to January 1, 2019. This is due to the intergovernmental agreement with Russia, according to which, Kazakhstan, importing duty-free Russian gasoline and diesel fuel, has pledged not to export light oil products. Thus, the Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan need to negotiate with Russia a temporary ban on gasoline imports, as well as with the countries who interested in export of Kazakh gasoline. Negotiations and signing of relevant intergovernmental documents with neighboring countries will take some time. According to the officials of the Ministry of Energy of Kazakhstan, starting from autumn of this year the country will be able to export gasoline to neighboring countries. At the same time, Astana, making plans for export, is not going to stop completely the import of Russian gasoline. As representatives of the Kazakh Ministry of Energy say, “let it remain, because force-major can occur at the refinery.” What countries will be interested in Kazakhstan’s gasoline export? Daniyar Tiesov, deputy chairman of the board for the transportation, processing and marketing of oil at the Kazakh national company KazMunayGas, told journalists that the countries of the Central Asian region – Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – will be consumers of Kazakhstan’s gasoline. As for Turkmenistan, the country not only closes its current domestic needs for consumption of gasoline, but also exports abroad. The procedure for purchasing Turkmen petroleum products by foreign traders is quite simple. Fuel is trade at trading sessions of the State Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange of Turkmenistan, which are held regularly. Turkmen gasoline is mostly purchased by business circles from UAE, Turkey, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and other countries.
