The drone attacks on the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) in late July have once again exposed a structural vulnerability in Kazakhstan’s energy security: the country may control the production of its oil, but it does not fully control the routes through which that oil reaches international markets. On 30 July, the tanker Nissos Sifnos was attacked by a UAV while loading Kazakh-origin crude at CPC’s SPM-3, while the tanker Marathi was attacked approximately six nautical miles from the CPC Marine Terminal while approaching to load. The incidents followed earlier attacks on commercial vessels operating through the CPC terminal on 17 and 19 July. CPC confirmed that loading operations were suspended after the 30 July incident, although the main pipeline facilities continued to operate.
The significance of these attacks lies less in the individual incidents than in what they reveal about Kazakhstan’s dependence on a single export artery. CPC remains the country’s dominant oil-export route: Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry stated in July that around 90% of the country’s oil exports pass through CPC, while the Ministry of Energy reports that Kazakhstan exported 78.7 million tonnes of oil in 2025, with 64.8 million tonnes transported through CPC. The Ministry of Energy nevertheless describes Kazakhstan’s overall transportation system as diversified, noting the existence of the Atyrau–Samara route, the Kazakhstan–China pipeline, the Aktau port and rail routes. The practical problem is that these alternatives do not yet have the capacity to replace CPC at comparable scale.
The vulnerability has already produced measurable consequences. In January 2026, two tankers carrying or preparing to carry Kazakh crude were attacked near the CPC terminal, prompting temporary disruption and forcing operators to manage exports under heightened security constraints. By July, the problem had moved beyond isolated incidents: Reuters reported that CPC loadings fell by more than 20% during the month, equivalent to roughly 400,000 barrels per day, while Kazakhstan’s oil production declined by 14% as producers reduced output because of limited export capacity. This is a critical distinction. A disruption to an export terminal does not remain confined to the logistics sector; when storage capacity becomes constrained, production itself can be cut, affecting the entire upstream chain.
The fiscal dimension makes the situation more consequential. Kazakhstan’s dependence on hydrocarbons has declined over the longer term, but oil revenues remain an important component of public finances. The International Monetary Fund notes that the authorities are explicitly seeking to reduce the republican budget’s dependence on oil revenues and that transfers from the National Fund remain an important element of fiscal management. A prolonged disruption in oil exports would therefore affect not only producers and transport operators but also the state’s fiscal position, particularly if lower export volumes coincide with weaker oil prices or higher transport and insurance costs.
The insurance market provides another channel through which the security problem can translate into economic costs. Repeated attacks on tankers and terminals have increased uncertainty for shipowners and traders, while Reuters reported that tanker availability and shipping costs have been affected by security concerns around the CPC terminal. The result is a broader risk premium around Kazakh crude: even when the pipeline itself remains technically operational, elevated maritime risk can make the final stage of the export chain more expensive and less predictable. This matters because Kazakhstan competes in a global oil market in which transport costs, insurance and reliability influence the attractiveness of a cargo just as much as the headline price of crude.
Yet Kazakhstan is not responding by abandoning CPC. The more realistic strategy is route diversification. The Ministry of Energy already identifies several alternatives, including the Kazakhstan–China pipeline and maritime exports through Aktau. It also notes that Kazakhstan currently transports about 1.2 million tonnes of oil annually through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) route, while Azerbaijan has expressed readiness to increase the volume it can receive to 2.2 million tonnes per year. Reuters has also reported that Kazakh producers have increased the use of alternative routes through Georgia, including rail shipments to Batumi, when CPC disruptions made it necessary to protect production levels.
This is where the current crisis becomes strategically important. The attacks demonstrate that energy security is inseparable from transport security. Kazakhstan may have abundant reserves and expanding production capacity, but the economic value of those resources ultimately depends on the reliability of the infrastructure linking fields to foreign consumers. The CPC experience suggests that concentration in a single large export corridor creates a form of systemic vulnerability: the disruption of one maritime terminal can affect production, transportation, revenues and investment simultaneously. Diversification therefore should not be understood simply as building another pipeline. It requires a network of alternative routes capable of absorbing part of the flow when one corridor becomes unavailable.
For Astana, the lesson is therefore not that CPC has become obsolete. CPC remains by far the most efficient large-scale export route for Kazakhstan. The lesson is that efficiency and resilience are not the same thing. The economic logic of concentrating exports through the most established route can remain compelling, while the geopolitical logic increasingly points toward a broader portfolio of alternatives. The development of BTC, Aktau and Caspian shipping capacity, together with rail links to the South Caucasus, can gradually reduce the consequences of a disruption without requiring Kazakhstan to abandon its existing infrastructure.
The July attacks have consequently transformed what was previously a diversification strategy into a more immediate question of national economic resilience. Kazakhstan’s exposure is not simply to a pipeline operated in cooperation with Russia; it is exposed to the security conditions of an international transport chain extending from Central Asia to the Black Sea. The more frequently that chain is disrupted, the greater the incentive for Astana to develop alternative routes- even if those routes are initially more expensive. The central question for Kazakhstan is therefore no longer whether it needs alternative export corridors, but how quickly those alternatives can become commercially and physically capable of absorbing a meaningful share of Kazakh oil exports.
Kazakhstan’s response to the growing vulnerability of the CPC has been oriented not towards abandoning the route, but towards expanding the number of export channels available to Kazakh crude. One of the most immediate options is the Kazakhstan- China oil pipeline, whose capacity is expected to be expanded, while the government is simultaneously seeking to increase shipments across the Caspian towards Azerbaijan and onward through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. Kazakhstan currently transports around 1.2 million tonnes of oil annually through BTC, while Azerbaijan has expressed readiness to increase its capacity to receive Kazakh crude to approximately 2.2 million tonnes per year. These routes, however, cannot physically replace CPC: Kazakhstan exported 78.7 million tonnes of crude in 2025, of which 64.8 million tonnes moved through CPC. The significance of alternative routes therefore lies not in their ability to absorb the entire CPC volume, but in their capacity to prevent a complete halt in exports when the primary corridor is disrupted.
This distinction is also reflected in the assessment of Ilham Shaban, head of the Azerbaijan Centre for Oil Studies, who characterises Kazakhstan’s current policy not as an “exit from CPC,” but as “insurance against CPC.” In his assessment, even an increase of BTC shipments to 2.2 million tonnes annually would represent only a small fraction of Kazakhstan’s total oil exports and therefore cannot constitute a physical substitute for CPC. Its strategic value is instead to provide an operational reserve alongside other routes, including Baku- Supsa, Caspian tanker transportation through Aktau, rail shipments to Georgian ports and the Kazakhstan- China pipeline. This approach effectively transforms diversification from a long-term infrastructure objective into a form of crisis-management capacity: when CPC becomes temporarily unavailable, Kazakhstan needs alternative channels sufficient to maintain production and export flows rather than a single corridor capable of replacing CPC in full.
The same logic is emphasised by Rasul Kospanov, a political analyst specialising in Central Asia and senior researcher at Nazarbayev University’s National Analytical Centre, who argues that Kazakhstan’s heavy dependence on CPC was not previously perceived as an immediate strategic vulnerability. Before 2022, the route was regarded as commercially effective and politically manageable within the framework of Kazakhstan–Russia relations. The subsequent deterioration of the regional security environment forced Astana to reassess this assumption. In this context, developing routes through Azerbaijan and the Caspian has become a gradual process rather than an immediate substitute. A trans-Caspian oil pipeline under the Caspian Sea could theoretically provide a much larger alternative, but Kospanov notes that its construction would require substantial investment and several years of development, while its commercial and geopolitical feasibility remains uncertain. Kazakhstan is therefore more likely, at least in the near term, to rely on a combination of Caspian tanker shipments, BTC, Baku–Supsa, rail connections and the Kazakhstan–China pipeline. This is consistent with the government’s own policy of developing a diversified transportation system rather than relying exclusively on a single alternative. 
The emerging model is therefore not “CPC versus an alternative route,” but CPC plus alternatives. This distinction is crucial. Kazakhstan cannot realistically reproduce the capacity of CPC through BTC, rail or Caspian shipping in the short term. What it can do is reduce the consequences of another disruption by ensuring that a portion of its crude can be redirected elsewhere. The expansion of the Kazakhstan–China route is particularly significant because it provides access to an entirely different market, while the Caspian–Azerbaijan–Georgia–Turkey network creates an alternative western outlet. The growing use of these routes would consequently give Kazakhstan greater strategic redundancy: no single corridor would have to carry the entire burden of export security. This is already visible in the broader development of Kazakhstan–China transport links, where bilateral freight volumes increased by 9% in the first half of 2026, with exports to China rising by 20%. 
Ultimately, Kazakhstan’s most realistic strategy is not to replace CPC, but to make CPC less indispensable. The distinction is strategically important: as long as CPC remains the dominant export artery, Kazakhstan will remain exposed to disruptions beyond Astana’s direct control. But every additional million tonnes that can reliably move through another corridor reduces the economic impact of a future interruption. The current diversification effort should therefore be understood less as a search for a single “new CPC” and more as the gradual construction of a multi-route export system, in which the Caspian, South Caucasus, China and existing Russian infrastructure collectively provide Kazakhstan with greater room for manoeuvre.