Facts about The Oil, Gas and Mining Industry in Kazakhstan
It would be interesting to see some changes in the mining industry of Kazakhstan. It is well-known that the economy of Kazakhstan depends on oil reserves as well as minerals and metals and external demand for them in the World. Furthermore, due to the low level of economic diversification we can forecast the situation in the economy in the near future monitoring the development of fields and factories and the volume of mining.
The dynamics of the mining industry in physical terms was found on the official site of Agency for Strategic planning and reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan https://stat.gov.kz.
The first line graph below illustrates 10 main productions in the mining industry of Kazakhstan between 1990 and 2020.
The historical trends show hard coal as a major mining, steadily decreasing from 131 443 ths tonnes produced in 1990 to 58 375.9 ths tonnes in 1999. Despite fluctuation between 1999 and 2010, there was an increase reaching 110 929.4 ths tonnes and this can be seen recession in hard coal mining until 2020. The major sources of coal production are two regions: Pavlodar (67 010.5 ths tonnes in 2020) and Karaganda (37 567.7 ths tonnes in 2020). However, it should be noticed that in 2019 copper ores production exceed the production of hard coal despite the fact that copper ores volumes fluctuated at about the level from 20 000 ths to 40 000 ths tonnes during the essential period between 1990 and 2016. After 2016 there were a tremendous growth to 123 107 ths tonnes. There are three major regions that produce copper ores: East Kazakhstan (51 140 ths tons in 2020), Karaganda (33 663.5 ths tonnes in 2020) and Pavlodar (33 088.6 ths tonnes in 2020).
The next two major productions that take substantial part of all mining is oil and gas production. Oil volume has had a tendency to rise despite some small decreases during some periods. The significant region in oil production is Atyrau (46 745.1 ths tonnes in 2020).
I also singled out the graph of natural gas industry that has the increasing trend similar to oil trend.
There are two regions where natural gas is produced: Atyrau (24 183.6 mln cubic meters in 2020) and West Kazakhstan (20 918.1 mln cubic meters in 2020). However, it can be seen that the majority of industry productions showed a slight fall during the last year. Only iron ores and asbestos production has risen at last year.
In addition to the dynamics of production, it should be known that the closing of the old fields and mines and the failure to open new ones will become one of the main problems in our economy that we will face in the near future.
