Oil and gas operators signed contracts worth about 320 billion tenge with Kazakh manufacturers at an oil and gas machine-building forum in Uralsk on October 16, alongside memorandums on further cooperation. According to Kazakhstan's Ministry of Energy, the three largest operators – Tengizchevroil (TCO), North Caspian Operating Company (NCOC) and Karachaganak Petroleum Operating (KPO) – account for around 70% of the sector's procurement. In 2025 their combined purchases of goods, works and services rose by roughly 4% to 2.8 trillion tenge, and local content reached 56%, or 1.6 trillion tenge.
Two days of open doors for suppliers
The Ministry of Energy co-organised the Oil and Gas Machine Building Forum and Operators' Open Day with the International Centre for Development of Oil and Gas Machine Building (IMBC), which used the event to mark its fifth anniversary. NCOC said the programme opened on October 15 with a delegation led by Vice Minister of Energy Yerlan Akbarov visiting three plants in West Kazakhstan region – WEST OIL Engineering Company, UralskAgroRemMash and West Kazakhstan Machine Building Company – which make instrumentation and automation systems, specialised machinery, steel structures and large oil and gas equipment.
The forum itself drew about 800 participants, and around 40 local manufacturers exhibited. Under the agenda the ministry published in advance, TCO, NCOC and KPO were joined by Silleno, the Sinopec-backed polyethylene project in Atyrau, and KMG PetroChem in presenting procurement catalogues, holding sessions on tender procedures and technical requirements, and meeting suppliers one-on-one. IMBC ran a separate session on ASME and API standards. The forum closed with the contract signing. The ministry also signed a memorandum, under an approved five-year programme, on developing local content in goods, works and services for the Tengiz project.
Akbarov said widening Kazakh companies' role in the supply chains of major projects is a priority, delivered through five-year local content programmes with specific measures to raise purchases of domestic products and set up new manufacturing in the country. NCOC Deputy Managing Director Zhandos Orazaliyev said the company keeps working to involve more local suppliers in the North Caspian Project, with a focus on localisation and international standards.
The numbers in context
Scale: 320 billion tenge is a little over a tenth of what the three operators spent in 2025. Contract terms, delivery schedules and the list of signatories have not been published, so this is an order of magnitude, not a gain in local share.
Rules related to this news
What is not yet local: at 56% local content, roughly 44% of the three operators' 2025 spending – about 1.2 trillion tenge – fell outside local content (our calculation from ministry figures). That covers equipment Kazakhstan does not yet make as well as foreign service contractors, and it is the pool the five-year programmes aim to shrink.
Market size: if the three operators really account for about 70%, total oil and gas procurement would be in the region of 4 trillion tenge a year. Treat this as an estimate; the two figures may not cover the same period.
What it means for Chinese equipment makers
What follows is our reading of public information, not a conclusion. The forum agenda put ASME and API certification and technical specifications on a par with price, and the five-year programmes explicitly favour new production inside Kazakhstan. For Chinese oilfield equipment suppliers eyeing Tengiz, Kashagan and Karachaganak, straight exports of finished equipment will run into local content requirements; assembly or processing at Kazakh plants, or joint ventures, look like the more practical route onto approved vendor lists. Demand is also no longer purely upstream: Silleno and KMG PetroChem came with catalogues of their own.
Open questions: which operators signed the 320 billion tenge in contracts, with which manufacturers and for what products; how long the contracts run; what targets the new Tengiz memorandum sets; and whether operators will publish their long-term needs catalogues and count output from foreign-owned local plants as local content.
(The cover image is AI-generated for illustration and does not depict the events described.)
Sources:
Kazinform (citing the Ministry of Energy), https://www.inform.kz/ru/kazahstanskie-proizvoditeli-poluchili-zakazi-neftyanih-gigantov-pochti-na320mlrd-e66dc904
NCOC press release, https://www.ncoc.kz/en/news/news-1100
Zhaik Press (official West Kazakhstan region news, citing the Ministry of Energy press office), https://zhaikpress.kz/ru/news/na-forume-neftegazovogo-mashinostroeniya-v-uralske-podpisany-dogovory-na-summu-poryadka-320-mlrd-tenge/
memleket.kz, Ministry of Energy event notice, https://memleket.kz/ru/events/40297-forum-posvyashchennyy-razvitiyu-neftegazovogo-mashinostroeniya
Kazakhstan Today, https://www.kt.kz/eng/economy/kazakhstan_s_oil_and_gas_companies_sign_320bn_tenge_1378002399.html