Western oil firms pay Kazakhstan's oil field investment bill Kazakh Oil and Gas Minister Sauat Mynbayev told reporters that the deal between the consortium of foreign companies with stakes in Kashagan, including ENI, ExxonMobil, Total and Shell, and the Kazakh state oil and gas company, KazMunaiGaz, was finalised last week. "For the consortium, this will be in the region of $986 million (roughly £628 million) in 2012 and 2013," he said, according to the Reuters news agency. Mr Mynbayev also said that the long awaited first production phase of Kashagan would start in 2013. Kashagan is both symbolically and economically important for Kazakhstan. Located in the north part of the Caspian Sea, which freezes over during winter, it is technically one of the most complex projects ever attempted. It's also large and has been touted as the biggest oil find in the world since the 1960s. Kazakhstan wants to boost oil production by 60 percent by 2020 and Kashagan lies at the heart of this push. Alongside KazMunaiGaz, ENI, ExxonMobil, Total and Shell, two smaller stakes in Kashagan are owned by ConocoPhillips and Inpex.