Russia Stops Transit of Kazakh Oil to Europe

A Russian court ordered, on Wednesday, a 30-day suspension of the activity of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which takes oil from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea.

The CPC operator pointed out that the ruling to halt operations was related to paperwork on oil spills and that the consortium had to abide by it, according to Reuters.

The decision came just two days after Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told European Council President Charles Michel via phone that Nur-Sultan was “ready to use its hydrocarbon potential for the sake of stabilization of the global and European markets.”

Meanwhile, trading sources familiar with the operations of the terminal told Reuters that oil exports from the CPC terminal on the Black Sea were continuing on Wednesday morning. Other industry sources confirmed that oil supplies from fields to the CPC pipeline were uninterrupted as of Wednesday morning.

Last June, Russia halted gas supplies to France as network operator GRTgaz noted that Paris had not received any Russian natural gas via pipeline since 15 June.

“GRTgaz remains vigilant for the coming winter and calls on shippers to continue to fill their national storage facilities as much as possible,” the grid operator, a unit of France’s main gas supplier Engie, said in a statement.

“Since June 15, GRTgaz has noted a halt in the physical flow between France and Germany. This flow was around 60 GWh/d (gigawatt-hours per day) at the beginning of 2022, which is only 10% of the capacity of the interconnection point,” it added.