Kazakhs see $150 mln Kashagan delay fine by Apr 10

/REUTERS, Astana, Raushan Nurshayeva, March 23, 04/ - An ENI-led consortium will pay Kazakhstan $150 million in fines for delayed commercial output from its mammoth Kashagan oilfield by April 10, although the total fines could be more, Kazakhstan said on Tuesday. "By the end of March, $100 million will be transferred, and I believe that $50 million will be received by April 10 this year," Finance Minister Yerbolat Dosayev told journalists. The ENI-led consortium and the Central Asian state signed a deal last month agreeing to delay production at Kashagan until 2008 from the original target of 2005. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but a Kazakh official said then the consortium could be fined "hundreds of millions of dollars." Dosayev, who first mentioned the sum of $150 million last week, declined to disclose the overall amount of the fine. Kashagan, in the shallow Caspian Sea, is one of the world's biggest oil finds of the last three decades. It is to be developed by the Western consortium under a 40-year production sharing agreement with Kazakhstan. The ENI-led group -- which includes Royal Dutch/Shell, Total, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Japan's Inpex -- has invested over $2 billion in the field so far. [2004-03-23]