| CA-NEWS (KZ) - The Kazakh Ministry of Oil and Gas is developing regulations for operation and safety of oil pipelines, said Nurdaulet Suindikov, the spokesman of the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO). "On the instructions of the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Oil and Gas is developing regulations for operation and safety of oil pipelines and a number other regulatory documents to improve safety of the pipelines," he told a Thursday press briefing in Astana. According to him, these documents are necessary to close the loopholes in the existing laws and regulatory documents relating to oil and gas transportation. Mr Suindikov said that the prosecutor's offices had identified a number of safety violations during pipeline operation as a result of "inadequate control and supervision by the authorized bodies." Thus, JSC KazTransOil has been operating certain sectors of the Komsomolsk-Makat and Pump Station-3-Koschagyl pipelines for over 65 year though their service life is 30 years only. The same refers to Bukhara-Ural, Central Asia-Center, Kartaly-Rudny-Kustanai and Tashkent-Bishkek-Almaty pipelines, some sections of which havwe been in operation 15-20 years longer than their service life.
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