In Kazakhstan OKIOC is ready to drill the second well at the Caspian

/IRBIS, Aug.29, 00/ - REUTERS informs that international oil consortium OKIOC is said to be ready to drill the second well at Western Kashagan in early September after it had successfully completed the drilling of the first well at Eastern Kashagan in north-east of Kazakhstani part of the Caspian shelf. It is said that drilling platform Sunkar will be moved to Western Kashagan which is 40 kilometers from Eastern Kashagan and where preparation works will be done. The company is said to use the data obtained from the first drilling works. The consortium is said to consist of Phillips Petroleum , Japanese Inpex, Italian Agip, British BG Plc, BP Amoco, Norwegian Statoil, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell and French TotalFina. In early July of this year the government of Kazakhstan announced of big reserves of oil at about 7 bln tons at Eastern Kashagan, though OKIOC was not so optimistic and said that additional information was needed to determined the real reserves, though the site is believed to be one of the largest structures in the world. The Kazakhstani part of the Caspian shelf is forecasted to have about 95 bln barrels or 13 mln tons and 5 trillion cubic meters of gas which is believed to provide for 120 mln tons of production a year.