The Russian court for a month suspended the work of the Caspian pipeline consortium due to environmental violations-RBC

The Primorsky District Court of Novorossiysk from July 5 to a month suspended the activities of the Caspian pipeline consortium (KTK). About this writes RBC.

According to the publication, as a result of the inspection conducted on May 6, Rostransnadzor revealed environmental disorders at KTK production facilities. The initiator of the audit was Vice Prime Minister Victoria Abramchenko. A month later, a protocol was drawn up.

“The Caspian pipeline consortium operates within the framework of the legal field of the Russian Federation and is forced to execute the court decision. The decision will be appealed in accordance with the order established by law, ”the company quotes RBC.

As Mikhail Krutikhin, a specialist in the oil and gas market, explained to The Insider, the suspension of KTK can be political in nature:

All environmental disorders on the KTK terminal have recently been eliminated. Normal repair of the berths that suffered during the storm was made, the detected ammunition of the time of World War II was deactivated. Everything is ready to work, and so far no environmental problems have arisen at this facility. Therefore, I think that such court decisions should be attributed to cases of geopolitical pressure on investors and foreign companies. Either in order to withdraw property, or it is such petty revenge to Kazakhstan for not sharing the foreign policy principles of Russia.

But Kazakhstan also has its own pressure levers. If such a conflict is erupted in the oil and gas industry, then it will be able to block the export of Russian oil to China. Rosneft annually exports 10 million tons of oil through Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan may also stop the work of the Orenburg gas processing plant, to which he is now supplies.

As stated on the KTK website, annually the pipeline pumps more than a third of the entire export oil of Kazakhstan. In mid -April April, Kazakhstan deputy Aykyn Konurov said that about 80% of oil exports to the European Union were carried out through the CTK. According to him, the EU is the largest market of Kazakhstan.

At the end of March, Russia stated that CTK was damaged as a result of a storm. The company said that "these damage are critical and do not allow ensuring the safe operation of the device." At the end of April, a message appeared on the KTK website that the work of the pipeline was restored: “Timely detection of malfunctions and the withdrawal of equipment equipment made it possible to exclude the possibility of an emergency oil spill into the Black Sea.”

In June, Russia first reduced, and then stopped the transportation of Kazakhstani oil through KTK. As Kommersant wrote, this is due to the fact that 50 minutes of the Second World War were discovered in the Port of the Novorossiysk port.

A couple of days before, the President of Kazakhstan Kasym-Zhomart Tokaev called “DPR” and “LPR” “quasi-state” and stated that Kazakhstan would not recognize them-just like Taiwan, Kosovo, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This happened at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where Tokaev was sitting next to Vladimir Putin.