Kazakhstan hopes Russian oil supplies to one of its three refineries will be resumed by July

An intergovernmental agreement between Russia and Kazakhstan on Russian oil supplies to the Kazakh Pavlodar-based refinery is to be signed before July 2012, KazTag Agency reports, citing Shukhrat Danbai, Director General of the Pavlodar refinery as saying June 5. Tengrinews.kz reported earlier that late May Russia’s Transneft reduced oil supplies to the Pavlodar-based oil refinery twofold. Russia supplies up to 500 000 tons of oil to the facility a month. However, in May only 275 000 tons of oil will be supplied, according to Transneft’s spokesman Igor Demin. He elaborated that Kazakhstan hadn’t signed the agreement on calculating export duty on oil and petroleum products. “I am confident that towards July the intergovernmental agreement on oil supplies will be signed; and there will be no supplies-related issues”, Mr. Danbai said. According to him, “the draft agreement envisages supplies of 7 million tons of oil from Russia, with 5 million tons being supplied to the Pavlodat-based oil refinery”. Late November 2011 Tengrinews.kz reported that Pavlodar-based oil refinery had started processing Kazakhstan’s oil for the first time in history. Originally the oil refinery was designed to process only Russia’s oil. At the moment there are three oil refineries operating in Kazakhstan: in Atyrau, Shymkent and Pavlodar. Oil and Gas Minister Sauat Mynbayev had said earlier that, “the current overhaul of the three refineries before 2015 will enable to raise processing to 17.5 million tons, introducing deeper conversion to start producing petrol in line with Euro-5 emission standards”. Before the modernization the refineries processed a bit over 13 million tons a year.