Russia's Orenburg plant restarts taking gas from Kazakhstan field, energy minister says

Russia's Orenburg gas plant, damaged in a drone attack on Sunday, has restarted receiving natural gas from Kazakhstan's Karachaganak field, 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, Shell and Eni.


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

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.

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.