WORLD: The MOL Group signed a cooperation agreement with KazMunayGas

MOL Group and Kazakhstan’s national oil and gas company KazMunayGas (KMG) have signed a cooperation agreement to jointly explore opportunities in the oil, gas and petrochemical sector.

According to a press release from the Hungarian company, this agreement extends the Joint Venture partnership in Kazakhstan, under which MOL, KMG and Sinopec from China produce gas and gas condensate in the Rozhkovskoye field.

As part of the cooperation agreement, MOL Group and KMG expressed their desire to explore new growth opportunities in areas such as hydrocarbon exploitation, technological transfer, crude oil supply, petrochemicals, as strategic partners, taking their relationship to the next level.

The priority of the partnership is to expand the existing cooperation for exploitation and production and the application of MOL technology in Kazakhstan to increase the production margins in the mature fields and the sale of the produced hydrocarbons in Europe. Also, the two companies are looking for solutions that could facilitate the import of crude oil from Kazakhstan to Europe and Hungary.

The document was signed in Budapest by the CEO & chairman of MOL, Zsolt Hernadi, and by the president of the Board of Directors of KMG, Askhat Khassenov, during the visit of the Kazakh president to Hungary.

“The agreement we signed today (Thursday) strengthens the more than 20-year relationship we have with our partners in Kazakhstan. We successfully exploited the Rozhkovskoye gas field and benefited from expertise, friendship and great opportunities in Kazakhstan. I must say that we are very open to more collaborations like this. Today’s agreement opens new doors for us and we are confident that we will find new projects to collaborate with KazMunayGas. Also, I would like to thank both our Governments for their support in the realization of this project. Thus, I assure you that we, from MOL, are eager to strengthen the economic relations between Kazakhstan and Hungary through new important projects in the energy sector”, said Zsolt Hernadi, quoted in the press release.

This year, MOL is celebrating its 20th anniversary since it has been present on the market in Kazakhstan. The company has so far invested approximately 200 million dollars in the oil sector in Kazakhstan, thus becoming the largest Hungarian investor in this country.

“KMG and the MOL Group are successfully collaborating on the Rozhkovskoye gas and condensate field in Kazakhstan as part of an international partnership that includes the companies KMG, Kazakhstan (50%), MOL Group, Hungary (27.5%) and FIOC , China (22.5%). The field was discovered in 2008 and, after exploration and appraisal, five of the nine wells drilled were successfully rehabilitated for production. The first amount of gas was produced in December 2023, and since then the production of the wells has increased to 1.35 million cubic meters of crude gas per day, contributing the equivalent of 4.43 thousand barrels of oil per day to the production of the MOL Group “, the press release states.

The agreement signed on Thursday with KMG follows those that the MOL Group recently signed with other strategic partners, such as the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) and the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) from Turkey.

The MOL Group is an international integrated oil, natural gas, petrochemical and retail company, headquartered in Budapest, Hungary. It has operations in over 30 countries, a workforce of 24,000 employees worldwide and over 100 years of industry experience. MOL Group controls three refineries and two petrochemical units at the level of integrated supply chain management in Hungary, Slovakia and Croatia. The company also has a network of nearly 2,400 service stations in 10 countries in Central and South-Eastern Europe.

MOL Group’s exploration and production activities are supported by over 85 years of experience in the hydrocarbon field and 30 years in CO2 injection. Currently, production activities are carried out in 8 countries, and exploration activities in 9 countries.