Royal Dutch Shell and its partners are to ask the Kazakh government for an extension to the 2013 deadline for the first oil from their troubled Kashagan field.
By Richard Orange, Almaty, Kazakhstan
5:40AM BST 01 Jul 2011
Kazakh oil minister Sauat Mynbayev has repeatedly threatened the consortium of oil companies with heavy financial penalties if it misses the 2013 final deadline.
The partners, including Shell, Total, ExxonMobil, Eni and Kazakh state oil company KMG, have repeatedly missed start dates beginning as far back as 2005.
A last-ditch plan to meet the 2013 deadline involved pumping at least 50,000 barrels per day of oil directly onshore, bypassing an unfinished processing plant on an artificial island.