From Declaration to Roadmap: Kazakhstan sets its EOR course for 2027–2030
The Astana Declaration on Enhanced Oil Recovery was adopted on August 28, 2026, at the close of the Kazakhstan Forum on EOR, which brought together more than 600 specialists from over 70 organizations. Its motto, “From field discovery to maximum resource recovery,” responds to a real problem: rising water cut and a growing share of hard-to-recover reserves across the country’s fields.
The Declaration lays out where the industry wants to go. It calls for a common methodological framework so that EOR technologies are screened and evaluated the same way across operators, for authorized bodies to review and monitor projects while the CCED keeps sole approval power, and for a national EOR register with regular audits. On the economic side, it leans on Article 148-1 of the Subsoil Code, which exempts EOR incremental oil from domestic supply obligations, allowing it to be exported at international prices, and pushes for that provision to become transparent, predictable practice rather than something inconsistently applied.
The Roadmap, now published, turns that into a plan with ten directions and year-by-year milestones through 2030. 2027 starts with the groundwork: an inventory of producing fields and idle well stock, the methodological framework itself, and a full screening of major fields against a defined technology list, polymer and ASP flooding, surfactants, gas methods including WAG, thermal and combined methods, horizontal wells, and stimulation techniques like injectivity profile control. Pilots follow in 2028, with industry-wide monitoring and a formal decision at the end of each one: scale up, refine, or stop. By 2029-2030, the targets are full-scale deployment, separate accounting of base versus incremental production, and 10 to 15 years of tax stability for approved projects.
The Roadmap also treats governance, incentives, technology localization, and training as one connected track rather than side items: at least 100 specialists trained, a Competence Center at KMG Engineering, an International EOR Center called KAZEOR, and an annual Forum to keep the industry accountable to its own targets.
The full documents are available on c-eor.com. And the logic behind both would apply just as well if you replaced “Kazakhstan” with almost any other producing country.
More information at https://c-eor.com/eor2026/declaration
