en.Wedoany.com Reported - South Korean construction company Hyundai Engineering and Construction will build a new natural gas processing plant in Kazakhstan to expand its energy business footprint in Central Asia.

Hyundai Engineering is collaborating with Kazakhstan's state-owned oil company QazaqGaz to implement this project within the existing Karachaganak Processing Complex (KPC) in the western part of the country. Previously, Hyundai Engineering had won bids for similar natural gas and petrochemical processing projects in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, accumulating business experience in Central Asia.

Hyundai Engineering is independently responsible for the engineering design and procurement of the plant, while it will form a consortium with the local subsidiary of Italian engineering, procurement, and construction company Sicim to jointly undertake the overall construction of the plant. The plant is designed with an annual processing capacity of 5 billion cubic meters of raw gas, sourced from the Karachaganak field. The field currently has 44 active production wells and is reported to hold approximately 13.6 billion barrels of liquids and 1.7 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves.

Currently, the gas produced from the field is not processed at KPC but is instead transported to Russia's Orenburg Gas Processing Plant under a long-term agreement signed between Karachaganak Petroleum Operating and KazRosGas, a joint venture of QazaqGaz and Russia's Gazprom. The agreement is valid until 2038, but the Orenburg plant was recently attacked by a drone strike from the Ukrainian Armed Forces amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, highlighting the uncertainties facing this processing link.

To ensure the security of natural gas supply, Kazakhstan is seeking to reduce its dependence on external factors by building its own processing infrastructure. The latest report estimates that the processing plant will be completed in 2028.