RECONSTRUCTION AND MODERNIZATION OF THE GNPPS OIL PIPELINES TO INCREASE THROUGHPUT
Kazakhstan has huge proven reserves of oil and gas. About 10715 km of oil and gas pipelines are used for transportation of hydrocarbons in the Republic. Nevertheless, the country today faces a number of unresolved problems related to the supply of oil to the domestic and international markets. The problems concerning the domestic market are that most of the reserves and the main volumes of oil production are concentrated in the West, while its consumers (large cities and industrial centers) are located in the South-East and industrial North. As a legacy of the Soviet economic system, oil produced in the West is transported through Russia to world markets, and domestic demand in the East is met by imports from Siberia. In addition, most of the existing pipelines were built decades ago and were intended to serve the purposes of the former Soviet Union, not Kazakhstan as an independent state. Currently, several projects aimed at improving the situation are at different stages of development. Since the Republic has practically no sea borders, transportation is the main problem of the development of Kazakhstan's oil market. Tariffs, the possibility of using pipelines and their capacity are crucial for any oil projects. To solve the problem of increasing the capacity of trunk pipelines it is possible to use different methods. The choice of the most effective can be chosen only on the basis of studying the state of the oil pipeline, its design, operating conditions, the product that is pumped through it, age and all kinds of structural features. At the same time, they are guided not only by considerations of the efficiency of the oil pipeline after reconstruction, but also the safety of its operation for humans and the environment.