Chevron-Led CPC to Export From Storage After Leak Shuts Pipe

By Nariman Gizitdinov

Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The Chevron Corp.-led Caspian Pipeline Consortium, linking Kazakhstan to Russia’s biggest Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, will continue shipments using stored supplies after a leak closed the pipeline yesterday.

“Black Sea exports from the pipeline continue as usual on account of storage,” Yaroslav Kouplinov, a spokesman for CPC, said by telephone from Moscow.

CPC operates Russia’s only foreign-owned oil-export pipeline. The pipeline in Kazakhstan sprung a leak on a section near Atyrau, spilling 47 cubic meters of crude, the Kazakh Emergency Situations Ministry said today.

Tengizchevroil LLP, the main crude supplier to CPC, said it will resume sending crude through the pipeline as soon as possible.

“Tengizchevroil is producing at full rates and is currently leveraging a combination of other crude export outlets and on-site storage,” Atyrau-based Tengizchevroil said in an e-mailed response to Bloomberg questions.

CPC engineers are deciding whether to repair the section of the pipeline that sprung the leak yesterday or replace it, CPC spokesman Kanatbek Zhumin said, according to the government’s Kazinform news service.

CPC shipped a total of 252.9 million barrels of crude in 2008, or an average of 690,059 barrels a day, according to its Web site. The pipeline has pumped 1.37 billion barrels of crude since it opened in 2001.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nariman Gizitdinov in Almaty, Kazakhstan, via the Moscow newsroom at ngizitdinov@bloomberg.net