Kazakhstan's Energy Sector Since Independence
IDEAS. INFLUENCE. IMPACT. ISSUEBRIEF Katherine Hardin THE DINU PATRICIU EURASIA CENTER Kazakhstan’s Energy Sector Since Independence: Two Decades of Growth and Challenges Ahead? Since its independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has tripled its oil production, taking its place among the top twenty oil The Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center producers globally. The country currently produces more Fostering dialogue among regional leaders, as well as than 1.7 million barrels per day (mbd), an amount roughly with counterparts from key neighbors and global equal to Libya’s 2010 production. Over the past decade, leaders, the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Kazakhstan’s oil reserves estimates have nearly doubled, Center provides distinctive research and advice to placing it among the top five countries that will account for governments and businesses worlwide. The Center more than half of the global liquids capacity growth to combines in-depth understanding of Eurasia’s history 2020. Kazakhstan’s considerable resource base has been with expertise on politics, economics, and energy to a critical factor in this success, but the government of promote an agenda of regional cooperation and Kazakhstan under President Nursultan Nazarbayev has integration based on shared values and common also made strategic choices to attract investment into the interests in a free, prosperous, and peaceful future. The energy sector and has successfully crafted a “multivectoral” Center’s collaborative approach aims to catalyze local, energy policy with its neighbors, particularly in the case of regional, and global strategies to address economic energy transportation. This paper highlights key stages in growth, deal more effectively with political issues, and Kazakhstan’s emergence as a major energy producer, but bring about energy development and trade in ways that points to challenges that lie ahead as the country continues reinforce economic and political well-being.
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