WASHINGTON, July 3 (RIA Novosti) – Kazakhstan will spend $5 billion to buy US energy major ConocoPhillips’ stake in the offshore Kashagan oil field, one of largest oil deposits discovered in recent decades, Reuters reported.
Houston-based ConocoPhillips announced last year its plans to sell its stake in the much-delayed project to the state-owned Indian company Oil and Natural Gas Corp.
But Kazakhstan’s Oil and Gas Ministry officially blocked the deal Tuesday by announcing that it was exercising the government’s right to preemptively purchase an 8.4-percent stake in the Kashagan development consortium.
Lyazzat Kiinov, head of the state-controlled KazMunaiGas energy company, said Chinese state-owned energy company CNPC would now purchase a stake in Kashagan instead, Reuters reported.
The Kashagan oil field, located in Kazakh sector of the Caspian Sea, is widely described as the largest field discovered in the past 30 years and the largest outside the Middle East.
