On February 17, seven unmanned aerial vehicles attacked the Kropotkinskaya pumping station in Russia, a crucial node in the 940-mile Caspian Pipeline Consortium that sends oil from Kazakhstan to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
The Russian side immediately said it was a “terrorist” attack. The Ukrainian side acknowledged responsibility, saying the strike was directed against “strategic objects that support Russia’s armed aggression.”
For almost three years now, Russia’s military aggression on Ukrainian territory has unleashed a widening circle of violence. Against the backdrop of the recent proposals from the United States and the European Union to find a pathway toward peace, the violence continues, against both settlements and infrastructure.
The attack against the CPC does little to harm Russia. But it could ultimately represent a cost for the transnational corporations that exploit the largest oil fields in western Kazakhstan.
Most of the oil that CPC pumps westwards, in fact, is drawn from the Tengiz oil field, which has been managed for over three decades by U.S. companies Chevron (50 percent), alongside Exxon (20 percent), Russia’s LukArco (5 percent), and Kazakhstan’s state-owned Kazmunaigas (25 percent).
At 1.5 million barrels a day, the CPC transports around 80 percent of Kazakhstan’s total oil exports. Upon reaching the oil terminal at Novorossiysk, the oil is loaded onto tankers and makes its way to a number of European customers.
Now, with the Kropotkinskaya pumping station damaged, the throughput of the pipeline will have to shrink by about 30 percent, Transneft, Russia’s pipeline monopoly, said.
The day after the attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin called on the transnational corporations to pay for the restoration of the pumping station.
“If they are interested in restoring operations at this facility, let them organize the delivery of the necessary equipment, despite all the sanctions. They should do it themselves,” Putin told local media.
These corporations would have to pass a number of bureaucratic hurdles to invest cash or send equipment to Russia, given the ever stricter sanctions regime the United States has imposed, especially on the country’s energy sector, to counter its war effort in Ukraine.
Because of sanctions, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak forecast that the pipeline would operate at reduced capacity and repairs would take several months.
For years, the CPC has been considered an “international” pipeline, transcending strictly territorial jurisdictions and therefore always excluded from Western sanctions. The presence of transnational corporations such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell among its shareholders was considered a warranty against it being used as a tool of energy diplomacy.
Yet an investigation published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in December 2024 unveiled that Russia’s influence over the pipeline had grown exponentially since 2020. “Transneft… orchestrated a power grab for control of the pipeline in 2020, effectively sidelining Western influence on operations,” the investigation revealed, adding that the CPC paid at least $816 million in dividends to Russian state-owned companies since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Already in March 2022, just one month after the start of the war, inclement weather prompted the CPC management to halt oil loading at the marine terminal in Novorossiysk. Observers doubted that the hiccups only had to do with the weather. Just months later the CPC was slapped with an administrative fine from a Russian court, which first ordered and then rescinded a 30-day suspension of operations.
Despite attempts to find alternative routes, the marginal volumes shipped through another pipeline transiting Russia, dreams about a Trans-Caspian pipe, and the establishment of a new marine outpost, Kazakhstan has yet to find a viable alternative solution to the CPC for its oil exports.
This makes Kazakhstan, which took a rather neutral diplomatic stance on Russia’s war in Ukraine, not immune from the crossfire. Hitting Kazakhstan’s oil exports means damaging its budget and affecting the bottom line of several Western transnational companies.