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Oil Logistics

Kazakhstan’s Oil Logistics Trap: Higher Prices, Limited Gains

Escalation in the Middle East has pushed oil back above $100 a barrel. For Kazakhstan, whose budget remains heavily dependent on commodity exports, that should have been good news. But a high price matters only if the oil can reach buyers. For the world’s largest landlocked country, that is where the problem begins. European refiners are looking for alternatives to disrupted Saudi supplies, while problems along established routes through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea are increasing demand for crude from other regions. More than 80% of Kazakhstan’s oil exports, however, move through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium system across Russian territory to a terminal near Novorossiysk. The Middle East crisis is pushing prices and global freight costs higher, while attacks around Russian infrastructure are increasing the risks to Kazakhstan’s main export route. Over the past decade, Kazakhstan has significantly increased its oil exports. According to the Bureau of National Statistics, volumes rose from 63.6 million metric tons in 2015 to a record 76.3 million tons in 2025, an increase of about 20%. Exports grew from 65.2 million tons in 2022 to 71 million in 2024 and 76.3 million tons in 2025. Expansion at the Tengiz field contributed to that growth. Kazakhstan’s oil and gas condensate production reached 99.6 million tons in 2025. The government had planned for about 98 million tons in 2026, but export disruptions have already forced temporary output cuts. Revenue has not risen as steadily as volumes. “In monetary terms, growth over the past decade was considerably stronger, although the trend, as noted above, was also much more volatile. The value of exports increased from $26.8 billion in 2015 to $40 billion in 2025, or by 49.3%. The highest figure during this period was recorded in 2022, at $46.9 billion,” Ranking.kz said in its analysis. Physical volumes and export revenue have often moved in different directions. “This was particularly evident in 2025: Kazakhstan exported 7.4% more oil than a year earlier, but its value fell by 6.8%. The average estimated value of one exported metric ton declined from $604 in 2024 to $524 in 2025,” the analysts calculated. In the first half of 2026, Kazakhstan exported $40.3 billion worth of goods. Crude oil and petroleum products accounted for 46.5% of the total. Export statistics and transportation data measure different things. The Bureau of National Statistics records goods cleared for export, while the Energy Ministry and pipeline companies report volumes pumped, transshipped, and transported. The same cargo can pass through several sections of the system, so those figures cannot simply be added together. In March, Talgat Makuov, acting director of the Energy Ministry’s oil refining and transportation department, said 64.8 million tons of Kazakh oil had moved through CPC in 2025. Another 9.2 million tons went through the Atyrau-Samara pipeline, while 1.1 million tons were shipped through the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline toward China. Against those volumes, the Trans-Caspian route remains small. In 2025, 1.26 million tons were shipped across the Caspian toward the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. The plan...

Almaty Culture

Yurts, Throat Singing, and Aport Apples at Almaty City Day

On Sunday, September 20, yurts, market stalls, activity areas, and stages lined Panfilov Street, extending downhill from the building that houses the Kazakh-British Technical University (KBTU). The flow of people barely thinned until evening. Almaty celebrates City Day on the third Sunday of September. This year, concerts and festivals were held on Astana and Abai squares, Zhibek Zholy Street, outside the Alatau Theater of Traditional Art, and across all eight districts. The busiest program unfolded on Panfilov Street in the historic center. The main stage was set up near the KBTU building. Completed in 1957, it was the seat of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic and later housed the parliament of independent Kazakhstan. It was here on December 16, 1991, that the constitutional law declaring Kazakhstan’s independence was adopted. The concert had no strict division by genre. Traditional throat singing, a vocal technique in which a singer produces a low note while bringing out higher overtones, gave way to folk dancing, followed by pop performers. The crowd remained dense as people moved between the main stage and nearby venues. Music changed along the length of Panfilov Street as visitors moved downhill. Some performers played outside the official program, while dombra musicians could be found beyond the festival area in other parts of the city. [caption id="attachment_56530" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] One of several music stages along the city streets.[/caption] At the Alma Digital area, traditional competitions were given a digital twist. In the archery event, the bow was real, but the target appeared on an LED screen, and the system displayed the arrow’s speed after each shot. In the tug-of-war challenge, a wall replaced the opposing team, while a screen measured the force applied in kilograms. Lines of children formed at both activities, regularly joined by adults. Yurts along the street offered felt goods, textiles, jewelry, and dombras. Children played games and watched performances, while other areas featured crafts, films, environmental projects, sports, and food. [caption id="attachment_56535" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] Traditional textiles.[/caption] An exhibition of archival photographs documented Almaty from the days of Verny through the postwar period. Visitors lingered over the images, trying to identify familiar streets and intersections. A separate area was devoted to the Alma Qala festival, where apples from farms around Almaty were brought for sale. According to Kazinform, more than 200 tons of fruit were supplied for the fair, ranging from widely grown varieties to the now much rarer Almaty Aport. The region’s connection to apples predates Aport, reaching back to Malus sieversii, the wild apple that still grows in the Tian Shan mountains and is recognized as the main progenitor of the modern cultivated apple. Genetic research traces the origins of domesticated apples to Central Asia and shows how other wild species contributed to their genetic makeup as cultivated varieties spread westward along the Silk Road. [caption id="attachment_56536" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] Apples gave Almaty its name.[/caption] Aport arrived in Verny in the 19th century and flourished in the foothills around the city, where its...

Aral School

“It’s Not the Whole Story”: Aral School Participants Rethink Karakalpakstan

A proverb about seasonal food caught the attention of Australian researcher, multimedia artist, and producer Jess Nikitina-Li while she was at the Aral School in Nukus. “I’m interested in language, art and storytelling, and I didn’t really know what I would be working on during the program, but I became obsessed with this proverbial wisdom that kept coming up when we started asking questions about food systems in Karakalpakstan,” she told The Times of Central Asia. One proverb in particular became important to her work: “Three months of pumpkin, three months fish, three months melon, three months milk. All four seasons of the year the people are well fed and a lot of sweet fruit we have in our lands.” “This really grounded my thinking because it reflects my belief that people are not inherently depleted,” she said. “People become depleted through extraction. Seasonal abundance has always been in this land, and people know how to work with the seasons; people are adaptive.” The school is an initiative of the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation (ACDF). Its first cohort studied food and water at a household level. Applications for the second cohort, which will explore the theme of “Climate and Landscape” from January to June 2027, are open until October 25. [caption id="attachment_56507" align="aligncenter" width="1774"] Image: ACDF[/caption] TCA spoke with participants about their work in Karakalpakstan. Nikitina-Li became particularly interested in the role of women within households, including kelin, a term referring to a young bride or daughter-in-law. “One of the key projects I worked on was a project called Tabak,” she said. “Tabak is a specifically resonant symbol in Karakalpakstan. It is the iron plate that everyone traditionally eats from.” Her work with women eventually led to the creation of a cooking collective called “The Wild Kelin,” through which participants explored traditional recipes, nutrition, seasonality, and the knowledge passed between generations. “I wanted to see what was important to them, what was relevant to their households, because that to me is the test of what is relevant to this region,” she said. “We did a lot of community programming, textbook research, field research, field recordings and filmmaking, but the most important thing for me was done in close collaboration with our local colleagues,” she told TCA. “This was really a priority for me. It was why I came here, to have this strong intercultural exchange and to make solidarities with the land and with the people who understand the land the best.” “We didn’t do this through this lens of people as victims, but through a lens of empowerment and understanding people as having agency - that they have an inherent capability of keeping themselves, and each other, alive,” Nikitina-Li said. “Something unique to this program was understanding how to create a community - a community of thinkers and makers who are grounded in the same principles, values and ethos, but who work so differently.” “My biggest takeaway from the first cohort is wow - this was very...

Eurasian History

How the Golden Horde Changed Eurasia: An Interview With Marie Favereau

French historian Marie Favereau, a professor of medieval history at Paris Nanterre University, has spent more than two decades studying the Golden Horde and its place in Eurasian history. The Horde developed from territories assigned to Jochi, Genghis Khan’s eldest son. Her book, The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World, challenges the familiar image of nomadic societies as forces of destruction. It describes a sophisticated political system in which nomadic rulers built and restored cities while maintaining complex economic and diplomatic relations. Favereau visited Kazakhstan for the launch of the book’s Kazakh translation, published by Steppe & World Publishing with support from the French Embassy. The 1,000-copy edition was presented at the National Academy of Sciences in Almaty and at Maqsut Narikbayev University in Astana. At Cassackia Art Space in Astana, Favereau spoke with The Times of Central Asia about why she views the movement of the Horde’s political center toward Central Asia as adaptation rather than decline and how new research is changing perceptions of its legacy in Kazakhstan. She describes Jochi as a figure who changed the Mongol Empire’s geopolitical order, while portraying the relationship between Golden Horde ruler Tokhtamysh and the Central Asian conqueror Timur, also known as Tamerlane, as more complicated than a simple conflict. TCA: How did you begin researching the Golden Horde? Marie Favereau: I started in Paris when I was a student. I was preparing my master’s thesis during my third year at the Sorbonne, one of the main universities in Paris. At that time, I suddenly learned about the Golden Horde, and it immediately caught my interest. I was studying several languages. I was learning Arabic, I already knew some Russian, and I had also started learning Turkish. So I thought, “Wow, this is a topic for me.” However, there were very few books available in French, so it was quite difficult to conduct research. My supervisor told me that I needed to travel to other countries because there was not enough material available in France. For my master’s thesis, I studied the sources of the Golden Horde, as well as Soviet scholarship and the way the Golden Horde was presented in Soviet historical works. That was the very beginning. It was more than twenty years ago. Since then, I have continued to discover new research interests, new sources, and new questions, and I am still working on the subject today. TCA: What difficulties did you encounter when working with historical sources? Favereau: There were several difficulties. One was language, and another was the different writing systems and scripts used in the sources. There was also a lack of academic supervision. When I was doing my master’s degree, I did not have someone who could consistently guide me in this field. Another challenge was that I had never been to Central Asia. I knew very little about the region. At that time, I did not have a clear image of the area in my mind, so I felt that I needed to travel there. But...

Agriculture

Kyrgyzstan China Move Toward Mutual Recognition of Organic Certificates

Kyrgyzstan and China have agreed to begin work on mutual recognition of organic certification systems, in a move that Bishkek hopes will simplify exports of organic agricultural products to China. At present, obtaining an organic certificate in Kyrgyzstan is not enough for a producer to sell a product as organic in China. The agreement was reached on September 17 during talks in Bishkek with a delegation from China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, or SAMR. The two sides agreed to establish a joint working group to harmonize their organic standards and technical requirements. Training and internships for Kyrgyz specialists were also discussed. The September 17 announcement described a “principled agreement” rather than a signed mutual-recognition arrangement, so it is too early to speak of the Chinese market being opened to Kyrgyz organic products. An organic certificate is only one part of the requirements for exporting food to China. Depending on the product, exporters must comply with separate sanitary requirements covering everything from pests and diseases to processing, packaging, and storage. Overseas food producers and processors may also need to register with Chinese customs through the China Import Food Enterprises Registration system, known as CIFER. In practical terms, mutual recognition could remove one layer of certification, but it would not eliminate other import requirements. Different products are subject to different rules. Approval for Kyrgyz raspberries, for example, does not automatically provide access for beans, honey, or meat. Kyrgyzstan already produces organic goods including beans, apricots, and nuts. Certification could increase their value, but exporters would still need consistent supplies, cold storage where required, and reliable transport across the border. By the end of June 2026, more than 101,000 hectares in Kyrgyzstan were covered by organic production systems. Around 11,400 hectares are cultivated by 11 cooperatives working to international standards, producing goods ranging from cotton and beans to fruit and nuts. Most of the remainder, about 85,300 hectares, falls under a Participatory Guarantee System, or PGS. These lower-cost systems are mainly aimed at local markets and are not automatically recognized abroad. The total area under organic production therefore does not show how much Kyrgyz produce could already be sold in China as organic. A key issue in the negotiations will be which parts of Kyrgyzstan’s certification system China agrees to recognize. By 2029, Kyrgyzstan wants to expand certified organic farmland to about 200,000 hectares and run pilot programs in Issyk-Kul and Naryn to shift more farming toward organic production. The national program also aims for organic products to account for 25% of agricultural production and exports. China has been gradually opening its market to individual categories of Kyrgyz agricultural products. The countries have already signed eight protocols covering products including beans, poultry, wool, and cashmere. Dried fruit exports have begun, while access for several other agricultural products remains under discussion. China has also simplified access for frozen fruit. It removed quarantine-access requirements for imported frozen fruit in August 2024, allowing such products to enter from any country provided other import requirements are...

Mining

Kazakhstan Mining Royalty System Delayed Until 2029

Kazakhstan plans to delay a new mining royalty system until 2029, postponing a reform that would tax raw ore more heavily than metals processed inside the country. The government backed the two-year delay, saying parts of the system still need further work. The royalty regime would apply only to new mining licenses issued from 2027 onward for areas where mining rights have not previously been granted. For example, a company receiving a new license to develop a previously unlicensed copper deposit would come under the royalty system, while an existing copper mine would continue paying the current mineral extraction tax, or MET. The main difference is when and how the tax is calculated. Under MET, tax is charged on minerals extracted from the ground. Under the proposed royalty system, the payment would instead be linked to the sale of the mineral product. This approach is more closely tied to actual sales. More significantly, the tax rate would fall as the mineral is processed further. The Tax Code sets a rate of 13% for ore, 10% for concentrate, and 7% for metals. A miner selling raw ore would therefore face almost twice the royalty rate of a company producing metal, giving businesses an incentive to process more of their output in Kazakhstan. Putting the system into practice has proved more difficult. The government says it still needs to decide how royalties should be calculated on minerals recovered from old tailings and other mining waste, and how the rules should treat expensive new projects and valuable minerals produced alongside a mine’s main commodity. The proposed rules will be tested against mining companies’ financial models before they take effect. The Finance Ministry had previously raised concerns about a rapid transition to royalties. In 2024, the State Revenue Committee estimated that applying rates similar to those used in Western Australia could reduce annual budget revenue by about KZT 270 billion ($606 million), while extending royalties to all subsoil users could result in losses of about KZT 450 billion ($1.01 billion). Those estimates do not apply directly to the much narrower reform now planned, which covers only future licenses in areas where subsoil use rights had not previously been granted. They do, however, help explain the government’s caution over changes to subsoil taxation. The State Revenue Committee says tax payments from more than 7,000 subsoil users, including oil and gas producers, account for around 35% of Kazakhstan’s republican budget revenue. The postponement therefore leaves the main structure of the reform intact but gives the government another two years to decide how it will work in practice. The Times of Central Asia previously examined the arguments surrounding the reform and Kazakhstan’s effort to link mining taxation with greater domestic processing.