Excerpt from report by Kazakhstan Today news agency web site 
	
	
 The Kazakh Oil national oil company's enterprises produced 4.9m t of oil in the [first] nine months of this year, that is 11.6 per cent up year on year. The extraction of oil over and above the plan - 336,000 t - was possible due to the launching of new wells and measures taken to intensify the production process, the company's press service reports. An increase in the extraction was possible thanks to the company's active investment policy which has been conducted since 2000, the press service says. Capital investments in production increased by 37 per cent in the first nine months of this year compared to the same period of 2000. Capital was invested in renewing the main facilities, increasing volumes of drilling and wells and upgrading them. The company processed 1,697,000 t of oil and fully provided the Atyrau oil refinery [in the west of the country] with oil. Kazakh Oil paid more than 34bn tenge [the current exchange rate is 148 tenge to the dollar] to the budget in the period, that is 60 per cent up year on year...