Fire at Tengiz oil field, January 18, 2026. Video screenshot.
Oil production at Kazakhstan’s Tengiz and Korolevskoye fields has been temporarily suspended because of power supply issues, Reuters reported, citing the field operator Tengizchevroil (TCO).
“TCO confirms that, as a precautionary measure, the company has temporarily halted production at its Tengiz and Korolevskoye oil fields,” the statement said. The suspension is linked to “an issue that affected certain power distribution systems at the facility.”
Earlier, the state-owned company KazMunayGas reported that on the morning of January 18 a fire first broke out in a turbine transformer GT-9.3 at Gas Turbine Power Station No. 4, followed by a fire in a transformer at GT-9.5 at the same facility. Both fires were extinguished, and no injuries were reported. The causes of the incident are under investigation.
Tengiz is Kazakhstan’s largest oil and gas field, located in the Atyrau region, about 350 kilometers southeast of the city of Atyrau. The Korolevskoye field is situated nearby, around 20 kilometers to the northeast. Both fields are operated by Tengizchevroil.
Tengizchevroil is owned 50 percent by Chevron, 25 percent by Exxon Mobil, 20 percent by KazMunayGas (a subsidiary of Samruk-Kazyna), and 5 percent by Russia’s Lukoil.
Recoverable oil reserves at the Tengiz and Korolevskoye fields are estimated at 1.4 billion metric tons, or about 11.5 billion barrels. Most of Tengizchevroil’s output is exported via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) system. However, due to damage to infrastructure at the marine terminal in Yuzhnaya Ozereevka near Novorossiysk, part of the crude is currently being rerouted through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline and to Germany via the Druzhba pipeline.
