Kazakhstan’s giant Kashagan oil field is achieving new production highs every month and has done better than 300,000 b/d, but development beyond the current phase is likely to be about “discretionary step-ups” rather than giant steps, Shell country chair and vice president Olivier Lazare said Thursday. Speaking at the IP Week conference in London, Lazare declined to specify the current production level, saying there were still reliability issues with the first phase, which started producing in 2016 after more than $50 billion of investment and multiple delays, and has a target of 370,000 b/d. Kashagan, a 10-billion-barrel, high-pressure, high-temperature field developed by a seven-company consortium in the Caspian Sea, is viewed as an industry landmark. The project’s numerous difficulties have attracted scorn at times. But it is now boosting supplies of the high-quality CPC crude blend delivered at Novorossiisk on the Black Sea coast, which amount to well over […]