China expands development of Afghanistan’s oil fields

A 25-year contract was signed in Kabul for the development of a large oil field with the participation of China.

The area of 4.5 thousand square kilometers, located in the north of the country, in the Amu Darya River basin, near Mazar-I-Sharif, the capital of the former Northern Alliance.

The document, suggesting the extraction and processing of «black gold», and, in Afghanistan itself, with the construction of a refinery, includes a «research» stage of three years.

In the future, it is planned to extract up to 20 thousand tons of oil. After that, the field will reach the planned capacity, the scale of which will be determined in the next three years. But according to preliminary estimates, they amount to about 87 million barrels. The amount of financial investments from the Chinese side, which in the contract is represented by the oil company CPEIC, is planned to be in the amount of initial investment of $15 million, then another $540 million for the three years mentioned.