Beginning of oil production on Kashagan is postponed until 2009 or even 2010 from 2008, Kazakh Energy Minister Baktykoja Izmuhambetov said. Kashagan is to become one of the principal providers of oil for the Baku-Tbilisi-Jeihan pipeline, the project Kazakhstan officially joined earlier this month. "Oil production there is not going to begin in 2008," Reuters quoted Izmuhambetov as saying. Three years of negotiations between Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan terminated this July in the agreement on a route for Kazakh oil export alternative to Russian and Chinese routes. The volume of Kazakh oil export is expected to amount to almost 30 million tons and the pipeline itself cost over $4 billion. Official Astana needs Kashagan and other Caspian oil fields to accomplish its plans to triple oil production and become of the world's ten largest oil producers.