Russia's Orenburg plant restarts taking gas from Kazakhstan field

By Tamara Vaal

ASTANA, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Russia's Orenburg gas plant, damaged in a drone attack on Sunday, has restarted receiving natural gas from Kazakhstan's Karachaganak field, which has subsequently raised production, Kazakhstan's energy minister said on Wednesday.

The strike on the Orenburg gas plant, located about 1,700 km (1,056 miles) east of Ukraine, marked the first known disruption to Western oil majors operating in Russia as part of Kyiv's campaign against Russian energy infrastructure.

The incident underlined the vulnerability of cross-border energy assets to the widening conflict.

It led to reduction of oil and gas condensate output at Karachaganak, a major field in neighbouring Kazakhstan developed by an international consortium that includes U.S. major Chevron CVX.N, Shell SHEL.L and Eni ENI.MI.

"They started receiving gas," Kazakhstan's energy minister Erlan Akkenzhenov told reporters in the Kazakh capital Astana about the Orenburg plant resuming the intake.

He said gas supplies amount to 200,000 cubic metres per hour compared to the usual level of 840,000, and restoration to that volume will take several days.

KARACHAGANAK FIELD BEGINS OUTPUT RECOVERY

Raw gas from Karachaganak is usually delivered across the border to the Orenburg processing plant. Oil and gas output at Karachaganak is closely linked, meaning the field is not able to produce much oil if its gas production is down.

The partial restart of the Orenburg gas plant has allowed the Karachaganak field to begin ramping up production again, marking a tentative recovery from a disruption that temporarily shut in more than a third of the field's output.

While the facility has resumed receiving raw gas, only one of its three production lines is currently operational, with a second expected to restart within days, an industry source said on Wednesday.

The source said daily output of oil and gas condensate at the field had increased by 8% to 26,600 metric tons, or around 209,000 barrels, from 24,600 tons on Tuesday.

Output at Karachaganak on Monday fell to between 25,000 metric tons (196,500 barrels per day) and 28,000 tons from the usual level of 35,000-35,500 tons, according to two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

Karachaganak produced around 263,000 bpd of oil in 2024. It is exported by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium via a Russian Black Sea terminal, as well as through Russia's Druzhba pipeline to Germany.