Total expects little, if any Kashagan output this year

摘要

Paris—Output volumes from Kazakhstan’s Kashagan oil field in the Caspian Sea are likely to be small this year even if necessary repairs to offshore pipelines are completed and production from the mega-project is restarted before year-end, a senior executive at French major Total said Friday. Production at Kashagan began in September 2013 after a decade of delays and spiraling costs, but was halted after two weeks following a gas leak. A similar gas leak the following month led the project partners to halt production indefinitely and launch an investigation into the reasons behind the hitch. “It is clear that even if there was production before the end of the year it would not be much,” Total’s head of exploration and production, Arnaud Breuillac, told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Paris.