Kazakhstan - KalamkasMunai.

The KM venture is operated by Central Asia Pacific Petroleum (CAPP), an affiliate of CAP. KM is producing 80,000 b/d (up from 75,000 b/d in mid-2002) from the Kalamkas field, which is by far the biggest of six onshore Buzachi fields operated by different companies. Kalamkas has 3.5 bn barrels of oil in place and about 1.1 TCF of gas in place, with 1.2 bn barrels of the oil and 741 BCF of the gas being recoverable. But the oil is heavy, 25-29[degrees] API and its viscosity is about 30 cp at 20[degrees]C. With a sulphur content of up to 2%, the oil also has concentrations of heavy metal.

The oil was originally intended to be processed by a $1.6 bn complex refinery partly built at Mangistau. But the project has been postponed for lack of funding. The oil is being exported through a Kalamkas-Karazhanbas-Aktau pipeline commissioned in 1979.

One of the results of CAP's financial crisis in mid-1998 was that Kalamkas ceased production as its 1,800 wells were shut in. Kalamkas resumed production in November 1998 at the rate of 70,000 b/d. This was raised after March 1999, when oil prices across the globe rose sharply (see background in Vol. 55, No. 4).

Like the other five Buzachi Peninsula fields operated by different firms, Kalamkas is in the Karazhanbas-Karakuduk structural-tectonic zone that extends in a north-westerly direction across the peninsula. The peninsula is an area of low lying and marchy land actively subsiding because of the rising level of the Caspian Sea. (The sea was in 2002 expected to rise by 5 metres by 2010; several onshore fields will become offshore, as in the case of Tengiz which is already partly offshore). The Kalamkas reservoir is in a deep Jurassic, while the others are in shallow Jurassic (see a detailed background in Vol. 63, Gas Market Trends No. 5).