ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Aug 5: Kazakhtan has handed a hefty fine to one of its top oil producers for environmental breaches, prosecutors said Monday, in an unusually harsh punishment from the energy-rich Central Asian country.
The Kazakhstan-based producer Kaspi Neft "did not receive a (permit)... for accumulating over 4,500 tonnes of dangerous waste between 2021 and 2022 from drilling and operation of an oil field", prosecutors for Kazakhstan's Atyrau region bordering the Caspian Sea said in a statement released Monday.
A court hearing Friday found that the company had committed an administrative offence and fined it more than 13 million tenge (over $28 million). Prosecutors said the money had been paid.
Kaspi Neft is controlled by the son-in-law of former Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was in power for three decades until 2019.
Nazarbayev's relatives have taken powerful positions under his successor as president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
Kazakhstan's main oil fields are located on the coast of the Caspian Sea and offshore.
The world's largest inland sea is suffering falling water levels due to climate change, threatening extraction, and is also polluted by other sources of contamination including industry and agriculture.
The Kashagan oil field in the Caspian Sea is one of the world's most important offshore reserves with estimated recoverable reserves of 13 billion barrels of crude oil.
The oil is being jointly extracted by Italian group Eni, Britain's Shell, French firm TotalEnergies, US giant ExxonMobil, Japan's Inpex and China's CNPC as well as Kazakhstan's KazMunayGas. -- AFP
