Oil producer KazMunaiGas Exploration Production plans to spend up to $1 billion expanding beyond its home market of Kazakhstan and is looking at assets in Russia and the Middle East, the company's head said on Thursday. The planned expansion is part of KMG EP's plans to spend between $2.0 billion and $2.5 billion on acquisitions over the next two to three years, Chief Executive Askar Balzhanov told Reuters in an interview.
KMG EP is the London-listed unit of Kazakh state oil and gas company KazMunaiGas. Kazakhstan is Central Asia's largest economy and home to around 3 percent of the world's recoverable oil reserves. Balzhanov said the company planned to spend about $1.65 billion by January 1, 2012, to complete a deal to acquire its parent's stake in MangistauMunaiGas, a joint venture with Chinese state firm CNPC in western Kazakhstan. Balzhanov forecast that KMG EP would raise crude oil output to 13.2 million tonnes in 2012 from an expected 12.3 million tonnes in 2011, a year when strikes and power outages have cost the company more than 8 percent of its planned production.