Kazakhstan has fewer westbound oil export routes today than at any point since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On May 1, Moscow closed the northern leg of the Druzhba pipeline to Germany, citing "technical" reasons and eliminating a channel that carried more than 2 million tons of Kazakh crude in 2025. That closure landed in the middle of a slower-moving crisis on Astana's primary export artery, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), whose marine terminal near Novorossiysk has been struck repeatedly by Ukrainian drones since early 2025. The most damaging attack, in late November, destroyed one of the terminal's three single-point mooring buoys and reduced offshore loading to a third of capacity for nearly two months. SPM-2 remains offline.
Astana is now caught between the country it depends on for transit and the country fighting that transit's owner. The Ukrainian pressure is by far the costlier of the two, and the bill is falling overwhelmingly on Kazakhstan and the Western majors that operate its upstream—not on Russia, which the strikes were meant to punish. The CPC sits on Russian territory, but in 2024 just 15 percent of its 1.2 million barrels per day of throughput was Russian crude. The remainder came from Kazakhstan's three supergiants: Tengiz, Kashagan, and Karachaganak. Astana shipped roughly 55 million tonsthrough the route last year, accounting for some 80 percent of its total oil exports and around 40 percent of national export revenue.
The Western corporate footprint is equally exposed. Russian state entities (Transneft and the Russian Federation directly) hold 31 percent of CPC equity, and KazMunayGas 20.75 percent. The balance is divided among Chevron (15 percent), Lukoil (12.5 percent), ExxonMobil's Mobil affiliate (7.5 percent), Rosneft-Shell (7.5 percent), BG Overseas (2 percent), Eni (2 percent), and Oryx (1.75 percent). The same Western majors operate the upstream fields the pipeline serves: Chevron holds 50 percent of Tengizchevroil and ExxonMobil 25 percent. Uninterrupted CPC flow is therefore a direct commercial interest for several of the world's largest U.S. and European energy firms.
The pattern of attacks
The November strike was the most damaging in a year-long Ukrainian campaign against CPC infrastructure. In February and March 2025, drones hit the Kropotkinskaya and Kavkazskaya pumping stations, cutting flows by 30 to 40 percent. A September strike damaged the consortium's offices in Novorossiysk. The November 29 attack destroyed SPM-2, with SPM-3 already offline for scheduled maintenance through January. Loading was left dependent on SPM-1 alone. Winter storms in the Black Sea compounded the disruption. On January 13, drones struck two tankers — the Delta Harmony and the Matilda — loading Kazakh cargo, sending insurance premiums on CPC tanker calls sharply higher.
The CPC attacks fit within Ukraine's broader campaign against Russia's hydrocarbon economy. Strikes on at least 17 Russian refineries since early 2025 took roughly 20 percent of refining capacity offline at peak, though actual processing volumes fell only 3 to 6 percent as Moscow drew on idle capacity. Russia's retaliatory campaign has been more destructive: January strikes hit energy installations across 17 Ukrainian regions, disrupting heating in some 6,000 apartment buildings and cutting it entirely from another 1,100.
The bill for Kazakhstan
CPC exports from Kazakhstan fell 19 percent in December compared with November. Oil production contracted by close to 20 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2026, concentrated at Tengiz — where Tengizchevroil's $46.7 billion Future Growth Project achieved first oil only in January 2025 and was meant to drive Kazakhstan's production growth this decade. The Energy Ministry put January losses alone at $1.5 billion.
Two emergency responses followed. The first was operational: Kazakhstan accelerated delivery of two new single-point mooring units from the United Arab Emirates, contracted for $124.2 million, moving the timeline from April 2026 to January 2026. Delivery has since been complicated by the Iran war, and only one unit had arrived by April. The second was diplomatic. Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry filed a formal protest calling the November strike "the third act of aggression against an exclusively civilian facility whose operation is safeguarded by norms of international law" and warned that further incidents would damage bilateral ties. Ukraine's Foreign Ministry rejected the framing, faulted Kazakhstan for not having protested Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, and offered no commitment to halt strikes on CPC assets. Astana also appealed to Washington and Brussels to help secure Black Sea shipments — a request with material weight, given that EU member states absorb roughly 60 percent of Kazakhstan's oil exports and Western majors hold the equity stakes most exposed to further CPC damage.
The limits of alternative routes
The CPC's dominance reflects its economics: lower transit costs and higher throughput than any route available to landlocked Kazakhstan. According to Nurlan Zhumagulov, executive director of the Energy Monitor Foundation, the combined capacity of all alternative routes tops out at roughly 20 million tons per year, against the CPC's roughly 60 million. The Atyrau–Samara pipeline to Russia and the Atasu-Alashankou line to China both require capital-intensive modernization and additional pumping stations. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan route, accessed across the Caspian, is constrained by falling sea levels that limit tanker operations. Netbacks on all three are lower than via the CPC.
Diversification is occurring at the margins. Kazakh shipments via Atasu-Alashankou have risen by 50,000 tons, and via Atyrau–Samara to 255,500 barrels per day. Most of the volume previously moving through the Druzhba northern leg is being redirected to the CPC — meaning that as Russia closes one Kazakh export channel and Ukraine degrades another, Astana's options are narrowing from both ends simultaneously.
The strategic miscalculation
Ukraine's CPC campaign imposes marginal costs on Russia and serious costs on the partners Kyiv most needs. If the consortium were to stop entirely, Russia would forfeit roughly $600 to $650 million annually in dividends, taxes, and the added expense of railing North Caucasus crude to Novorossiysk. Kazakhstan and the Western majors operating its upstream would lose closer to $27 billion. The same Western firms whose governments arm and finance Ukraine — Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Eni — are absorbing the damage, alongside the EU customers who take 60 percent of Kazakh exports and grew more dependent on that supply after the Iran war disrupted Persian Gulf flows. Kyiv appears to be calculating that any blow to Russian-territory oil infrastructure is a blow to Moscow. The arithmetic does not support that. What the strikes are accomplishing is steady erosion of Kazakh-Ukrainian relations and quieter strain with Western partners whose economic interests run directly through the pipeline. If the campaign continues, Ukraine will have spent diplomatic capital it cannot afford for an operational gain Moscow can readily absorb.
Aida Amangeldina is a policy analyst focusing on the intersection of geopolitics, energy security, and environmental issues in Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and the Caspian Sea region. She holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science from Eurasian National University named after L.N. Gumilyov and a master's degree in International Relations and Political Science from Nazarbayev University. She has published articles in outlets such as Carnegie Politika, The Diplomat, Beda Media, CABAR.asia, Asya Avrupa, and ENERGY Insight & Analytics.
Themes: Ukraine,Economy,Conflict,Connectivity,Central Asia,Energy,Russia,Kazakhstan