Total trade
Atyrau Region’s total trade was virtually unchanged in H1 2026 at $13.60 billion, down 0.7%. Exports fell 2.0% to $12.95 billion, while imports, though small in absolute terms, recorded the region’s fastest growth, rising 34.4% to $650.5 million. Atyrau is unquestionably Kazakhstan’s largest oil-exporting region, accounting for 32.1% of national exports, compared with a modest 2.1% share of imports and 18.9% of total trade.
Among trading partners, Italy remains firmly in first place at $4.55 billion, up 2.2%. The Netherlands declined 16.8%, France grew 38.3%, and Türkiye posted the strongest result among major partners, up 109.0%. Greece and Spain both fell by 26-29%.
Exports
Exports are essentially built around a single product: crude oil. Food products are negligible at 0.1% of the total.
Crude oil worth $11.97 billion follows the established routes of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium to Italy, the Netherlands and France. Sulphur has a more unusual footprint: shipments worth $673.1 million go to Morocco, Brazil and Senegal, a completely different geography serving fertilizer producers in Africa and Latin America.
Türkiye has evolved from a secondary buyer, purchasing $172-283 million a year before 2018, into a major market that is accelerating again, with annual trade of $829 million and first-half growth of 115%. This represents genuine diversification away from traditional European markets, not a temporary episode. Morocco’s position as the leading buyer of sulphur, with a 52% share, highlights another side of the region: it supplies raw material to Africa’s phosphate industry through trade routes entirely different from those used for oil.
Imports
Imports remain small in scale, but they are the force driving regional trade growth, rising 34.4% to $650.5 million.
The import basket is typical of an oil-service economy: pipeline fittings, catalysts, metal structures, transport bogies and axles.
Catalysts were close to a German monopoly in 2015-2020, with a 78-100% share. Since 2021, however, the supplier base has broadened significantly, and China has now drawn level with Germany at 40% each, marking genuine diversification in petrochemical inputs. Metal structures show a complete rotation of suppliers over the decade: Russia in 2015, Slovenia in 2016-2017, South Korea in 2018-2020, China in 2021 and Russia again in 2023-2025. Such turnover is usually tied to specific investment projects rather than durable trade relationships and should not be read as a trend.
Atyrau Region remains an almost single-product oil-export economy, accounting for 32% of Kazakhstan’s total exports, with Italy firmly established as its principal buyer. The more interesting shifts are taking place at the margins: Türkiye is gaining weight as an alternative oil market, while the region’s small but rapidly growing import flow is increasingly oriented toward China. That growth follows the cycles of oil-service projects rather than sustained underlying demand.
National Bureau of Economic Research specifically for EconomyKZ.org
