Reports of a huge oil slick drifting in the area of the Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea have turned out to be unreliable. What is more, the information was circulated from abroad.
As a reminder, earlier the executive director of the 'Globus' centre for environmental and legal initiatives, Galina Chernova, reported an oil spill in the area of the Kashagan field in the Caspian Sea. According to her, the area of the spill was approximately 7 sq km.
According to media outlets citing the Norwegian publication 'Upstream', it turned out that the false report of an oil leak was first published in a Telegram channel linked to the Russian company Lorett LLC. Incidentally, in its monthly report, 'Lorett' wrote that the 'spill' at Kashagan was the largest oil leak in the Caspian Sea in recent times.
This information was then picked up by Kazakh eco-activist Galina Chernova. However, when journalists approached her for comment, she stated that these questions were not for her, referring them to the Russian company that had disseminated the information.
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For reference: Lorett LLC is a private company registered at the Skolkovo innovation centre in Moscow. It develops equipment and technologies for receiving data from Earth remote sensing satellites.
Meanwhile, the department of the Ministry of Ecology for Atyrau Region did not confirm the information from 'Lorett'. The agency conducted an urgent inspection but found no traces of an oil spill at Kashagan. The operator of Kashagan, the North Caspian Operating Company N.V. (NCOC) consortium, also denied the information published by the Russian company.
Journalists believe that an actual oil leak at Kashagan could have strained relations between NCOC and its foreign investors, as well as caused discord between the field operator and the authorities of Kazakhstan.
Earlier, NCOC had already lost a court case brought by the Ministry of Ecology of the Republic of Kazakhstan regarding violations of environmental protection. The amount of environmental fines totalled 2.3 trillion tenge ($5.1 billion).
Also reported is a no less interesting coincidence. Majilis deputies recently proposed that the Oil and Gas Council under the President should ask the foreign shareholders of Kashagan to exchange their stakes in Kazakh enterprises for frozen Russian assets that were confiscated due to sanctions against the Russian Federation.
'For Russia, this proposal would be extremely advantageous, which the authors of the initiative themselves do not hide. In effect, the Russian Federation would gain control over the largest oil and gas fields in Kazakhstan for free. State bodies have not yet officially commented on this proposal,' the report states.