Perhaps no field in the world has so vexed oilmen as Kashagan. The world’s biggest oil companies—Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Italy’s Eni and others—have stumbled again and again while developing this offshore Kazakhstan super-giant, the second-largest oilfield on the planet. Eight years after promising to be done, they still had not produced a teaspoon of oil.

But today—two decades after Kazakhstan gathered these foreign companies into an exploration consortium—oilmen finally pumped out Kashagan’s first crude.

The companies did not disclose the rate at which they are drawing oil from Kashagan—given their sorry history with the field, it is probably a cautious dribble. They have said only that they aim to ramp up initially to 180,000 barrels a day, and later in this first phase of development to 370,000 barrels a day.

via The first oil flows from the biggest headache in the world – Quartz.