January 2025 BC Insight's Central Asia feature stressed that Tengiz Future Growth Project oil gains reinject associated gas to maintain reservoir pressure and therefore do not add sulfur export volumes, even as 2024 Wellhead Management lifted output toward 2.65 million tonnes. The piece is at https://www.bcinsight.crugroup.com/2025/01/31/sulphur-in-central-asia-2/.
Recovered sulfur tracks gas processing. Reinjected gas is gas that does not go through a Claus unit. An oil-growth project that holds reservoir pressure by putting associated gas back in the ground is an oil story, not a sulfur-export story. The January feature is a warning not to count FGP barrels as extra Kazakh sulfur cargoes.
Two point six five million tonnes toward which Wellhead Management lifted 2024 output is a large recovered-sulfur origin, in the neighbourhood of Canada's oil-sands elemental book. Those tonnes still needed Russian Baltic and Black Sea gateways to reach Morocco and Brazil. The later 0.3 million tonne a month transit figure, the May 2026 Roszheldor halt, and the June 2026 Kazakh export suspension are the logistics that would take this origin off the water. January 2025 still has it on the water.
Alberta recovered sulfur still leaves mainly through Vancouver. A Tengiz feature that says FGP does not add sulfur is a reminder that Canadian remelt is not competing with a new Kazakh Claus wave from FGP. It is competing with existing Tengiz and other Central Asian tonnes that move when Russian ports allow. 2025's 1.9 million tonne CRU deficit was not going to be filled by FGP sulfur that was never designed to exist.
USGS MCS 2026 listed Kazakhstan at 6 percent of US elemental sulfur imports for 2021-24. That share is existing barrels, not FGP. A January note that FGP does not add sales is consistent with that table staying at 6 percent for reasons other than a new project.
Tampa opened 2025 at $116 per long ton. Vancouver January-February loadings would print 621,000 tonnes, up 17 percent. Neither print depends on a Tengiz FGP sulfur increment that BC Insight says is not coming. The Central Asia feature is a negative: do not add FGP to the export supply file.
Associated-gas reinjection is reservoir engineering, not a sulfur-policy ban. The later Russian export ban is a policy. The January feature is chemistry and pressure. The desk will keep them separate.
Figures follow BC Insight. Licensed weekly grids are not restated.