Kazakhstan is suspending oil deliveries through its primary export route to the Black Sea after Ukrainian naval drone strikes damaged key infrastructure at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal in Novorossiysk, Russia. The attack hit mooring equipment at the marine terminal in late November 2025, forcing an immediate halt to tanker loadings.

The CPC pipeline carries over 80% of Kazakhstan’s total oil exports.

What happened at Novorossiysk

Ukrainian drone strikes targeted the CPC terminal’s mooring infrastructure, disabling the equipment ships use to berth and load crude. Without functional moorings, tankers cannot safely dock, which means exports stop regardless of how much oil is sitting in the pipeline waiting to move.

Kazakhstan’s government responded by publicly calling on Ukraine to stop targeting the facility.

The CPC pipeline accounts for more than 1% of total global oil supply.

The pipeline’s history of disruptions

The CPC terminal has been knocked offline before, and the consequences have been measurable. Past disruptions at the facility produced a sharp 35% drop in Kazakh oil output at the start of January 2026, illustrating how quickly a terminal problem becomes a national production problem.

Kazakhstan has limited alternatives. The country is landlocked, and the CPC route through Russia to the Black Sea port at Novorossiysk is the dominant artery for reaching international buyers. Other routes exist, including through Azerbaijan to Turkey via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, but those carry far smaller volumes and would require significant infrastructure investment to scale up meaningfully.

Russia operates and partially owns the CPC alongside Kazakhstan and various international oil companies, including stakeholders from the United States. The terminal sitting inside Russian territory means Kazakhstan cannot independently protect or repair it.

What energy investors should watch

A short-term halt for repairs is one scenario. A prolonged disruption that forces Kazakhstan to seek alternative routes, reduce output, or negotiate directly with parties to the Ukraine conflict is a different and more serious scenario. The 35% output drop seen in a previous disruption gives a rough sense of how badly things can deteriorate when the terminal stays offline.

Kazakhstan’s appeal to Ukraine reflects the reality that Astana needs the international community to recognize the CPC as civilian energy infrastructure rather than a legitimate military target. The CPC runs an extensive 1,500 km pipeline that facilitates crude oil transport from Kazakhstan’s Tengiz field, among others, through Russia to Novorossiysk.