Waste treatment and burial

The Company`s treatment of production and consumption waste is carried out at the Eco Centre facilities or Waste Management Complex. The facility ensures cost-efficient and environmentally safe recycling and treatment of drilling cuttings and fluids and is truly considered to be an example of the leading drilling waste management practice in the West-Qazaqstan Oblast.

The best available technologies are applied at the KPO Eco Centre facilities for treating production and consumption waste allowing not only reducing the volume and hazards of waste, but also extracting valuable components as well as treating waste for further reuse. Waste recovery to the process stream exercised by the Company is the best possible way to re-use the waste generated in drilling operations.

The KPO Eco Centre comprises five waste treatment facilities, as well as a Landfill for their safe disposal:

  1. Thermo-mechanical cutting cleaning facility (TCC),
  2. Rotary Kiln Incinerator (RKI),
  3. General Purpose Incinerator (GPI),
  4. Liquids Treatment Plant (LTP),
  5. Waste Segregation Unit (WSU).

In 2021, KPO completed all the activities scheduled within 2021-2023 Waste Management Program, including segregation, sorting, reuse, processing, reduction of volumes and hazardous properties, except for the treatment of solid waste in the Rotary-Kiln Incinerator due to the unscheduled long-term repairs of certain process parts of the unit. Handover of large-sized metal scrap as recyclable material to RSI «Kapitalneftegaz» has been postponed till 2022.

During 2021, the following activities were completed at the Eco Centre:

Eco Centre UnitsWaste treatment activities in 2021

Thermo-mechanical cutting cleaning facility (TCC)

Owing to the separation of base oil and water from the treated oil-based drill cuttings, the quantity of KPO disposed waste was reduced by 13% from the initially generated volume.

 

In 2021, 6,638 tonnes of waste were treated, 882 tonnes of base oil and water were separated, and 5,756 tonnes of waste treated at the TCC were disposed at the Solid Industrial Waste Landfill.

General Purpose Incinerator (GPI)

By incineration of waste at the GPI, the amount of waste was reduced by an average 89%. In 2021, 793 tonnes of waste were sent for incineration, following which 86 tonnes of ash were disposed at the Eco-Centre Solid industrial waste landfill.

Liquid Treatment Plant (LTP)

In 2021, 6,110 tonnes of liquid waste were treated. The process resulted in 4,287 tonnes of treated brines and muds, which were sent for re-use — preparation of drilling brines and muds.

Waste Segregation Unit (WSU)

In 2021, out of 1,128 tonnes of solid domestic waste, 790 tonnes were sent to General Purpose Incinerator for incineration, 180 tonnes, including waste paper, metal scrap, glass and plastic were sorted for handing over to the specialised organizations for treatment and reuse.

 

217 tonnes of solid domestic waste was handed over to specialised organizations for disposal at the Solid Domestic Waste Landfill. 129 tonnes of food waste was handed over to specialised organization for processing.

Solid Industrial Waste Landfill

16 cells of the Solid industrial Waste Landfill were capped and closed at the end of 2021.