Kazakhstan's state shipping firm Kazmortransflot is planning to borrow up to $60 million to build a tanker fleet to help export the Central Asian state's oil riches to the world market, the company said on Tuesday. Kazmortransflot, leasing oil tankers from Caspian neighbours Russia and Azerbaijan, received the first of the three Russian-built tankers at the end of 2004. The other two, each with dead-weight of 12,000 tonnes, are to be delivered later this year.
Kazmortransflot Director General Daniyar Berlibayev said two more Russian-built tankers were to be commissioned after 2005.
"We estimate total investment needed (to build the tanker fleet) at some $60 million," he told a news conference. "We want to borrow this sum."
He declined to mention the form of the borrowing.
"We are in talks with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and a dialogue with the (state-owned) Development Bank of Kazakhstan is also under way."
Kazmortransflot, owned on a parity basis by Kazakhstan's state oil and gas firm KazMunaiGas and the transport ministry, may also issue bonds or offer investors a package of its shares.
"These issues are now being discussed with our shareholders and the government," Berlibayev said.
Land-locked Kazakhstan wants to make efficient use of its access to the inland Caspian Sea, exporting its crude via littoral neighbours Iran, Russia and Azerbaijan.
Last year Kazakhstan produced 59.4 million tonnes of crude oil and gas condensate (1.23 million barrels per day). Exports by sea, handled by Kazmortransflot, surged by 57.5 percent to 4.029 million tonnes last year, Berlibayev said.
Rapid growth in oil exports via the Caspian is set to continue in the years to come, as Kazakhstan aspires to triple its oil output to 3.5 million bpd by 2015.
Eni-led consortium Agip KCO that plans to tap the giant Kashagan offshore field starting 2008, ChevronTexaco's Tengizchevroil venture developing the mammoth onshore Tengiz deposit and other major producers are all interested in trans-Caspian crude shipments, Berlibayev said.
He said the company was now studying a possibility of building tankers with dead-weight of up to 60,000 tonnes, having in mind an expected surge in Kazakh oil output in 2010-15.
He said Kazmortransflot assets grew by 75 percent last year alone and stood at 9.0 billion tenge ($69 million).