Published by: Vlast (vlast.kz), 12 August 2026

Beneath the Kokzhide desert, there’s water and oil; to extract the latter, companies are polluting the air.

If you ever see red on an air quality app, you know there’s a problem. And that’s what residents of Kenkiyak and Shubarshi, two small villages in western Kazakhstan, would have seen for most of the past three months on a state-run monitoring service, as they were forced to breathe pollutants likely produced by aggressive oil extraction taking place nearby.

Located in the center of the Aktobe region, the two villages sit next to the Kokzhide desert, which hosts the largest underground freshwater basin in western Kazakhstan. To the naked eye, however, what’s visible are the many rows of pumpjacks as they extract oil from the steppe, potentially contaminating the reservoir as they do so.

Oil extraction in the area represents under 1% of Kazakhstan’s total annual output and has been regularly criticized by residents and environmental activists for its proximity to the water basin. They fear that the drilling and pumping process could lead to leaks or spills, polluting the freshwater with dangerous chemicals.

Beyond the soil and water, however, oil extraction could also be polluting the nearby air.

New official air quality monitoring data reviewed by Vlast has shown excessive concentrations of sulphur dioxide (SO₂), hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), which are all toxic pollutants often linked to oil extraction. If unaddressed, experts say, these emissions will pose serious risks to air quality and public health, particularly for residents living and working near the oil fields.

In the Red

Despite the persistent complaints of public activists, local residents, and environmentalists about the potential harms caused by oil production, in February, the government gave the green light to five oil companies to continue extracting near Kokzhide, provided that they “comply with established industrial and environmental safety requirements.”

The companies, CNPC-Aktobemunaigas, KMK Munai, Kazakhoil Aktobe, Urikhtau Operating, and Firma Ada Oil, said they comply with environmental legislation and that there are no evident issues of air or soil pollution.

In response to an inquiry from Vlast, Firma Ada Oil said that its emissions are within the legal limits.

[…]

State-run stations that monitor levels of various pollutants, however, have regularly shown peaks that significantly exceed accepted standards.

Despite the monitoring app – which was built by the state meteorological service KazHydroMet – showing red levels, the agency told Vlast that it had not recorded “high” or “extremely high” pollution between April and June.

This statement contradicts both expert assessments of the compiled data and KazHydroMet’s own previous statements that in Shubarshi, for example, “on June 19, 21, and 25, 2026, 26 instances of high hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) pollution ranging from 10.0 to 16.5 times the maximum permissible concentration (MPC) were recorded.”

[…]

Nassiba Baimatova, professor of chemistry and head of the Environmental Analytical Chemistry Laboratory at Al-Farabi Kazakh National University in Almaty, told Vlast that the pollution is significant and potentially dangerous for the residents’ health.

“As concerns the concentrations of hydrogen sulfide in Shubarshi, the issue is not acute industrial exposure [such as could be provoked by a one-off accident – V.] but rather that the population is breathing concentrations far above what ambient [outside] air is supposed to contain,” Baimatova explained.

In Shubarshi, experts say, the high concentrations recorded of both hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) could easily be explained by the near-by presence of oil and gas extraction.

[…]

According to Baimatova, the flaring of natural gas, a process by which natural gas by-products are burned off during oil extraction, could be behind the excess Nitrogen oxide (NOₓ) concentration noted at the nearby village of Kenkiyak.

“NOₓ is produced by virtually any [form of] high-temperature combustion. If oil and gas extraction is the only industrial activity in the area, the only plausible sources locally are from oilfield-related combustion,” Baimatova argued.

Kate Watters, the executive director of Crude Accountability, an environmental rights organization, told Vlast that Shubarshi and Kenkiyak are villages that economically rely on the oil industry. Only a small number of residents are engaged in agriculture.

“Oil production is the only industry in the villages near Kokzhide, and air emissions demonstrate a direct link between [pollutants] and the oil facilities. Satellite data and infrared tracking confirm that flaring intensity there is five times higher than the global average (25 cubic metres of gas flared per barrel of oil produced),” Watters said.

As Watters explained, this natural gas byproduct can be particularly harmful to air quality around oil extraction sites.

“The crude oil that is extracted from Kokzhide is highly sour, meaning that its extraction produces associated gas containing heavy concentrations of toxic, corrosive hydrogen sulfide (H₂S). Its presence directly points to venting, leaks, and/or unsafe combustion [coming] from oil infrastructure.”

The companies engaged in oil extraction at Kokozhide deny using gas flaring outside of their regular production processes. But satellite images reviewed by Vlast and eyewitness accounts of burning flare stacks in the distance suggest otherwise.

Breathing In

Ardak Kubash, a local activist, told Vlast that, in the heat of the summer, it becomes difficult to choose between sweltering at home with the windows closed or opening the windows and breathing polluted air.

“There’s pollution. On days when it’s hot outside, you want to open a window after midnight, but you can’t — you can’t breathe because of the smell of gas and the dirty air. That’s how we live. That’s how it is in the center of Kenkiyak,” Kubash said. [Read more about the living conditions in the villages near Kokzhide in our reportage.]

Baimatova, the Al-Farabi University professor, confirmed the likely connection between gas flaring and the high concentration of pollutants recorded by monitoring devices.

“The fact that SO₂ peaks co-occur with H₂S peaks at Shubarshi is exactly what one would expect from intermittent flaring. When done in a controlled manner, the process of flaring converts H₂S into SO₂. But when the process is poorly controlled or when gas escapes [without being flared], levels of both pollutants can rise, as observed at Shubarshi,” Baimatova said.

According to Baimatova, in an area where oil extraction is virtually the only economic activity, these spikes in the concentration of both H₂S and SO₂ are not a random coincidence.

But this industrial pollution could be limited if the oil companies were handling the natural gas byproducts responsibly, Watters, the executive director of Crude Accountability, told Vlast.

“The companies at Kokzhide are not stripping ‘associated gas’ of sulfur,” Watters said, adding that this is common practice in the oil industry, but needs appropriate, modern facilities. “Those facilities would turn toxic H₂S into stable elemental sulfur.”

Instead, the toxic molecules spread in the air around Kokzhide.

Oil vs Water

The Kokzhide basin, according to various estimates, contains at least 1.5 billion cubic meters of water and could supply the entire western part of Kazakhstan: that is around 2.5 million people, or 12.5% of the country’s population.

The only obstacle to the utilization of Kokzhide’s water is the oil industry.

For around two decades, oil companies have worked around the water basin and, in some cases, within the boundaries of the nature reserve. For them, the “Kokzhide problem” does not exist.

Total production at the region’s fields amounts to about 600,000 tons of oil and 700 million cubic meters of gas per year, approximately 0.7% of Kazakhstan’s total oil production and 1.2% of its gas production.

Despite the companies denying that they have polluted the water basin, in 2023, Kazakhstan’s prosecutor general’s office and the local department of ecology detected petroleum products in Kokzhide groundwater. The department issued fines and demanded that oil production be stopped, but five oil companies filed a lawsuit and won on a technicality.

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Under public pressure, in 2023, the government laid out a schedule to decommission 332 wells by 2031, as reported by Just Finance International, a Netherlands-based transparency and accountability advocacy. Five oil companies, alongside the ministries of ecology and energy, signed the plan, agreeing to dismantle their rigs. In 2024, they decommissioned 11 wells.

In September 2024, however, then-deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar told the ministry of energy in an internal memorandum that production volumes did not need to be reduced until after a new geo-ecological and hydrogeological study had been completed.

In early 2026, the government gave the go-ahead to oil companies to continue drilling following the completion of this report, which was conducted by researchers from Satpayev University in Almaty and KAZENERGY, an oil industry lobby group. To this day, it remains confidential.

In June, in a private online hearing, members of parliament were shown the results of the study, which reportedly confirmed several instances of pollution. Because the report or its contents were not released to the public, three activists sued the government.

In late July, a court in Almaty sided with the activists, in a trial that focused on the transparency of government-sponsored expertise, and ordered the study’s findings to be made public.

Because of the risks, Watters of Crude Accountability told Vlast that the government’s original plan to halt drilling was the correct decision.

“Given the fragility and importance of the Kokzhide aquifer, upon which these oil fields sit, production must be decommissioned altogether,” Watters said. “And the government must also protect groundwater resources during this decommissioning process.”

Decommissioning pumpjacks and stopping oil extraction at Kokzhide would likely change the economic ecosystem of the nearby villages. Yet failing to do so will contribute to continued air pollution in the future locally and risks compromising the massive underwater reservoir, at great cost to the entire county.

Original source: https://vlast.kz/english/70411-breathing-oil-in-near-a-massive-water-basin-in-kazakhstan.html