Kazakhstan Reaffirms Russian Energy Ties as Ukrainian Drones Hit Oil Exports
Kazakhstan Reaffirms Russian Energy Ties as Ukrainian Drones Hit Oil Exports
Executive Summary:
- On October 7, Kazakhstan renewed its oil supply agreement with Russia, binding itself more closely to Moscow while about 80 percent of its oil exports already flow through Russia via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).
- Ukraine’s drone campaign against Russian energy infrastructure has repeatedly hit CPC facilities and tankers, and Kazakhstan expects to lose about 3.5 million metric tons of oil in 2026, cutting its production plan.
- With no navy in the Black Sea, Kazakhstan must rely on diplomacy with Kyiv. Ukraine’s assurance to Washington that it will spare CPC assets may not hold after U.S. President Donald Trump’s diesel deal with Moscow.
On October 7, Deputies of Kazakhstan’s Kurultai ratified a protocol renewing the intergovernmental agreement with Russia on the supply of oil and petroleum products, extending its validity until January 1, 2028 (Vedomosti, October 7). The vote came a day after Ukraine launched more than 650 drones toward Moscow oblast, and hours after Russia launched 130 drones, 48 cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles against Ukraine (Fontanka, October 6; 5 Kanal, October 7). Kazakhstan is binding itself more closely to Russia’s energy system just as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has turned the Russian ports that carry most Kazakh oil into targets.
The protocol revives a 2013 agreement that expired on January 1, 2024. It preserves annual coordination of supply balances and data exchanges, allows Kazakhstan to import Russian petroleum products duty-free, and provides for processing Russian oil at the Kondensat refinery in western Kazakhstan, which Russia co-owns and in which Kazakhstan keeps 30 percent of the output. Kazakh Vice Minister of Energy Kaiyrkhan Tutkyshbaev stressed that Russia remains Kazakhstan’s strategic partner (Vedomosti, October 7).
Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country and depends on other states’ infrastructure to reach world markets. About 80 percent of its oil exports flow through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) pipeline (Kommersant, August 25). The pipeline runs more than 930 miles from Kazakhstan’s Caspian oil fields to a terminal at Iuzhnaia Ozereevka, just southwest of Novorossiisk, Russia’s main Black Sea port in Krasnodar krai (Forbes Kazakhstan, December 6, 2016). In 2025, the pipeline carried a record 70.52 million metric tons of oil, of which 62.8 million metric tons came from Kazakhstan’s three largest fields—Tengiz (36.6 million metric tons), Kashagan (17 million metric tons), and Karachaganak (9.2 million metric tons), with Russian suppliers adding the remainder (Port News, February 26).
The CPC route is also a Western business interest. Russian companies own 36.5 percent of the consortium’s shares, with an additional 3.825 percent partly held by Rosneft through Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures Limited. Kazakhstan holds 20.75 percent. U.S. companies Chevron and ExxonMobil, through its subsidiary Mobil, hold 15 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively. The other shareholders include Russia’s Lukoil, Rosneft-Shell Caspian Ventures, and Eni (Interfax, December 1, 2025). Washington has exempted the CPC from U.S. sanctions on Russian oil (Neftegaz.ru, May 16, 2025). The pipeline carries about 2 percent of the world’s daily crude supplies (Mirror of the Week, July 24).
Kazakh oil also leaves through a second Novorossiisk facility. The Sheskharis terminal is operated by Transneft subsidiary Chernomortransneft (Glavcom, November 15, 2025). It is Russia’s largest crude-loading terminal on the Black Sea and ships Russian Urals and Siberian Light crude, as well as Kazakh oil (Kyiv Post, April 6). It can handle about 700,000 barrels per day (Censor.NET, August 14). In June 2022, Kazakh producers rebranded these exports as Kazakh Export Blend Crude Oil (KEBCO), after traders repeatedly mistook them for Russian Export Blend Crude Oil (REBCO), which Western sanctions had made difficult to sell (Neft i Kapital, June 6, 2022). In peacetime, Novorossiisk port facilities handled around 25–35 percent of all Russian crude oil exports, or about 3–3.2 million metric tons per month. In wartime, the site accounts for about 20 percent of Russia’s crude oil exports (Kyiv Post, April 6). That makes the port too valuable for Kyiv to ignore.
While Kazakhstan has alternative export routes, they are not comparable in capacity. In 2025, about 11.1 million metric tons went through the Atyrau–Samara pipeline to Russia’s Transneft network, 19.5 million metric tons through the Kazakhstan–China pipeline, including Russian oil in transit, and about 3.2 million metric tons through Kazakhstan’s Caspian port of Aktau, partly for transshipment to Azerbaijan and the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline (Forbes Kazakhstan, January 16). With more than 80 percent of the country’s oil exports depending on a single terminal within range of Ukrainian drones, each new attack in the Black Sea rebounds on the Kazakh economy (Kommersant, August 25).
In August 2023, Kazakhstan’s KazTransOil Deputy Director for Transportation Erik Sagiyev said that if the situation in the Black Sea worsened, volumes bound for Sheskharis would be redirected to Ust-Luga, a Russian Baltic port in Leningrad oblast (Mind, August 18, 2023). In March, however, Ukrainian drones struck Ust-Luga five times, forcing it to suspend exports, while the nearby port of Primorsk lost at least 40 percent of its storage (Ekonomichna Pravda, April 2). Drones hit Ust-Luga again on September 1 (Slovo i Dilo, September 1).
As Russia’s war against Ukraine settled into a stalemate on land, Kyiv extended the war to Russia’s energy exports, and the CPC was drawn in. Between February 2025 and July of this year, Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) attacked CPC facilities and the tankers loading at Iuzhnaia Ozereevka eight times despite Kazakh diplomatic entreaties to Kyiv to cease the assaults (Sputnik Kazakhstan, July 30). On February 17, 2025, seven drones struck the CPC’s Kropotkinskaia oil pumping station in Krasnodar krai, destroying its roof and damaging a closed switchgear unit, a gas turbine, cables, two transformers, and the fire suppression system. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak told Putin that oil flows from Kazakhstan fell by 30 to 40 percent (The Insider, February 18, 2025).
On November 14, 2025, the first significant drone attack on Sheskharis occurred. Russian Novorossiisk Mayor Andrei Kravchenko reported that drone debris damaged a Chernomortransneft storage tank and berth, as well as the Sheskharis oil depot (Telegram/@astrapress, November 14, 2025). On November 29, Ukrainian naval drones struck the CPC terminal itself, damaging one of its three moorings beyond repair. Kazakh Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the strike “a targeted attack on critical infrastructure” (Sputnik Kazakhstan, July 30). Kyiv replied that its actions were not directed against Kazakhstan (Interfax, December 1, 2025).
In February, then-Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Olha Stefanishyna confirmed that Kyiv had received a demarche from the U.S. State Department warning that attacks on the CPC terminal would cause tangible damage to U.S. economic interests in Kazakhstan. She stressed that the demarche did not require Ukraine to abandon strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, only on facilities tied to U.S. commercial interests (Exclusive, February 25). Kyiv kept Sheskharis in its sights. Drones attacked the terminal on March 2, and a strike overnight on April 5–6 damaged six of its seven oil-loading jetties (Exclusive, March 2; Ukrainska Pravda, April 6).
Over the summer, Ukraine’s maritime campaign escalated sharply. On June 25, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had approved a 40-day Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) operation to push Russia toward ending the war (Ukrainska Pravda, June 25). Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) struck 35 vessels in the Sea of Azov over 96 hours, as well as two tankers in the Black Sea (The Maritime Executive, July 9). By July 14, SBS Commander Robert “Magyar” Brovdi reported 116 vessels hit in nine days under Operation “MoLoChKa.” The operation targets Russia’s small tankers, dry cargo ships, and tugs in the Sea of Azov, limiting fuel deliveries to Crimea (Interfax-Ukraine, July 14, 18). Tankers serving the CPC were caught in the escalation. On July 7, a drone struck the unladen, Chevron-chartered tanker Yasa Polaris near the terminal (Deniz Haber Ajansı, July 9). Further strikes on tankers followed on July 17, 19, 20, and 30, and Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called them “an unacceptable attack on Kazakhstan’s economic interests” (Sputnik Kazakhstan, July 30).
This time, Washington intervened at a higher level. During a July 31 call, U.S. Vice President JD Vance asked Zelenskyy to halt the attacks. The U.S. was “alarmed that Ukraine was further destabilizing oil markets and harming U.S. companies by targeting tankers carrying crude piped from Kazakhstan to a Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal in the Russian port of Novorossiisk.” Ukraine agreed not to strike CPC infrastructure or non-Russian vessels, provided they were not under Ukrainian sanctions and were not carrying Russian oil or cargo (Nur.kz, August 12).
On September 8, a drone incident near the CPC terminal forced the suspension of loading at two of its moorings, according to Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy (Interfax, September 9). The economic damage is already measurable. On August 25, Kazakh Energy Minister Erlan Akkenzhenov said the attacks would cost Kazakhstan about 3.5 million metric tons of oil in 2026 and that the year’s production plan had been cut to 96 million metric tons. “Initially, we had the idea to produce oil in the same volume as last year—99 million 550 thousand tons and actually increase it to 100 million tons,” he said (Kommersant, August 25). The same day, Akkenzhenov also declared Kazakhstan’s readiness to supply oil to Russia despite Western sanctions (Vedomosti, October 7).
Lacking a navy outside the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan cannot protect its tankers in the Black Sea and relies on diplomacy. In September, Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi met Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha in New York on the sidelines of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly. Tleuberdi said they discussed “the need to prevent future drone attacks on our vessels in the Black Sea” (RTVI, September 28). He also reiterated Kazakhstan’s readiness to host negotiations between Russia and Ukraine (Dzen News, September 28).
On October 9, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an agreement with Putin to supply Russian diesel to U.S. and global markets to help lower fuel prices (Fakty, October 10). Overnight on October 10, Ukrainian drones struck the oil-loading terminal of the Novoshakhtinsk Refinery, formerly known as Iug Rusi, in Rostov-on-Don, a Russian city on the Don River near the Sea of Azov. The terminal, with a capacity of about 2.5 million metric tons per year, was previously hit on July 9 (Militarnyi, October 10).
Kazakhstan does not use Iug Rusi, but the strike showed that Ukraine will not abandon its campaign against Russian energy infrastructure. The CPC’s protection from Ukrainian strikes rests on a narrow U.S.–Ukrainian understanding that Trump’s rapprochement with Moscow could erode. By renewing its energy ties with Russia while its main export route remains within range of Ukrainian drones, Kazakhstan could see more diplomatic demonstrations in Kyiv.
