Since early April, parts of northern Kazakhstan and Russia’s southern Ural region have been hit by some of the region’s worst flooding in decades, with the President of Kazakhstan calling it the worst natural disaster to affect the country in the last 80 years. Over the last two weeks, several rivers across the region, including the Ural, Europe’s third largest river, and the Ob, the seventh largest river system in the world, burst their banks after heavy rain and rapidly melting snow and ice swelled them beyond their normal limits.
Thousands of citizens on both sides of the Russian-Kazakh borders have been evacuated, totaling 125,000, as of April 15. With water levels expected to continue rising in several regions in the coming days, localized operational and transportation-related disruptions are likely to persist for the foreseeable future. Those doing business in the affected areas of Russia and Kazakhstan should therefore prepare for continued business impacts.
Flood waters impact several major cities in southern Russia
The flood situation in portions of southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan is primarily due to a rapid snow melt that occurred in early April. Prior to this, snowfall in most of this area was above normal during the past three months. Cold temperatures in March also helped to maintain the thick snowpack. In early April, an abrupt shift to well above normal temperatures caused the snow to rapidly melt off, a situation further compounded by rainfall in the region.
On April 5, the Ural River rose several meters within just a few hours and burst through an embarkment dam, flooding parts of the city of Orsk, the second biggest city in the Orenburg Oblast. Flood waters inundated thousands of homes and other buildings, and displaced almost 4,000 of the city’s residents within days. The dam was reportedly constructed to withstand water levels of around 5.5 meters, but the Ural River rose to around 9.6 meters before it burst through the dam. Following the flooding, the oil refinery in Orsk, which processed around 4.5 million metric tons of oil last year, was forced to suspend operations. The refinery has since declared force majeure on fuel supply with effect from April 8, and it remains unclear when it will be able to resume normal operations.
Authorities order mass evacuations
A week after the dam breach in Orsk, authorities in Orenburg, the capital of the Orenburg Oblast and its biggest city, were forced to order mass evacuations, but did not specify which areas of the city were under evacuation orders. Local authorities have also warned that power outages are likely to persist in the city’s most affected areas until water levels decrease, which was only expected to begin during the week of April 15.
The full extent of property and infrastructural damages across the entire region will only become visible once water levels have gone down, however, operational impacts on local companies are likely. Among the region’s major industrial sectors are energy production, mechanical engineering, chemicals, consumer goods and food production. According to the Governor of the Orenburg Oblast, the costs of flood-related damages across the entire region had already exceeded RUB 40 billion ($425.6 million / €400.5 million) by April 12.
Meanwhile, the risk of flooding is expected to persist in Kurgan Oblast and Tyumen Oblast, where the water levels of the Ishim and Tobol Rivers continue to rise, and were reportedly close to or had already exceeded eight meters by April 16. In Tyumen Oblast, only eight villages have been evacuated, but with river water levels expected to reach record-breaking heights, local authorities are said to be considering mandatory evacuations, but no information on what areas may be affected was disclosed yet. The Oblast is a major oil-producing region in Western Siberia, which is home to the world’s largest hydrocarbon basin.
Northern Kazakhstan remains under significant flooding
Record snow melt and heavy rains have caused major rivers in the region to break their banks throughout North and Central Kazakhstan. The Ural River, which terminates in Kazakhstan at the Caspian Sea, and the Ob River system, which has multiple tributaries that originate in Kazakhstan are the main source of the recent flooding. So far, the Kazakhstan Ministry of Emergency has reported significant flooding in the Kazakh Oblasts of West Kazakhstan, Atyrau, Aktobe, Kostanay, Ulytau, Karaganda, Akmola, and North Kazakhstan, as well as the capital district of Astana. More than 111,000 people in Kazakhstan have been asked to evacuate since the start of the flooding.
Petropavl, the capital city of the North Kazakhstan Oblast with a population of 200,000 residents, saw multiple districts being completely flooded. The city is located on the Ishim River, a tributary of the Ob. Nearly 1,000 houses have been flooded, with an estimated 5,000 individuals forced to evacuate. Water and power supplies in parts of the city have also been disrupted. Officials expect flood levels to peak on April 16. The government has also begun to preemptively evacuate residents from communities along the Ural River in the West Kazakhstan Oblast, due to the expected inflow of more water and flooding in the coming days. Kazakh meteorological office Kazhydromet, expects water levels to continue to rise throughout the country over the coming days.
While state-owned oil company KazMunaiGas has not confirmed any disruptions to its operations in impacted regions, operational impacts on the Kazakh oil and gas sector remain possible, due to proximity of oil production and logistics infrastructure to cresting rivers, particularly in western Kazakhstan along the Ural River, should flooding continue.
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