The sale of a 75% stake in GPCI, the project company building a gas processing plant at Kashagan, to Qatar's UCC Holding has now dragged on for two years: the deal was originally expected to close back in 2024, but it never went through, infohub.kz reports.
In its half-year reporting, the Samruk-Kazyna holding said it intends to sell 75% of the GPCI project company while retaining 25%, as stipulated under a strategic agreement between Qatar and Kazakhstan. The sale is now expected to be completed by the end of 2026.
The agreement with the Qatari side was signed back in February 2024, during a visit to the Arab country by Kazakh President Qasym-Jomart Toqaev. At the time, QazaqGaz and Qatar's UCC Holding agreed to jointly build two gas processing plants at Kashagan, with capacities of 1 billion cubic meters per year and 2.5 billion cubic meters per year.
GPCI is handling the design and construction of the second of the two — a gas processing plant with a capacity of 2.5 billion cubic meters to process associated gas from the field.
To implement the joint project, a controlling stake in GPCI was to be sold to UCC Holding. The deal was initially expected to close by the end of 2024, and later reports pointed to mid-2025, but the company was never sold to the Qataris.
"The disposal was not completed within 12 months from the date the asset was initially classified as a disposal group. This is primarily due to the intergovernmental nature of the transaction and ongoing negotiations with the buyer on certain commercial and contractual matters," Samruk-Kazyna said in its reporting.
The holding noted that talks with the Qataris are still ongoing. According to the report, GPC Investment's assets held for sale were valued at 363.6 billion tenge as of the end of June. Liabilities stood at 247.8 billion tenge. Net assets classified as held for sale therefore amount to 115.8 billion tenge, which can be seen as the company's value.
Although GPC Investment has not yet commissioned the plant, it posted a profit of 9.2 billion tenge for the first half of 2026. The profit stemmed from a positive foreign exchange difference of 10 billion tenge.
Notably, construction of the Kashagan plant itself only effectively began in the summer of 2026. Two Chinese companies — China National Chemical Engineering Sixth Construction Company and China Wuhuan Engineering Corporation — were selected as the project's EPC contractors, meaning full-cycle contractors covering design, supply and construction. Both are part of the China National Chemical Engineering Corporation (CNCEC).