The Kashagan field covers an area of 47 miles by 22 miles and is located in the North Caspian Sea approximately 50 miles offshore from Atyrau. The field was originally operated only by ENI at 18.52 % and partnered by ExxonMobil (18.52%), Shell (18.52%), Total (18.52%), ConocoPhillips (9.26%), KasMunaiGaz (8.33%) and Inpex (8.33%). In November 2008 however, the Kazakh authorities approved a revised development plan for the field, according to which the state giant KazMunaiGaz doubled its stake and ENI lost its status as sole operator, sharing responsibilities with its partners in the consortium developing the field. It is one of the largest discoveries of the decade (with possible reserves of 10 billion barrels) and possibly one of the most challenging (Kashagan is one of the most technically challenging oil projects in the world. The development is in shallow water that ices over the winter and the oil is under extremely high pressure and contains huge amounts of lethal hydrogen sulfide), the project faced not only the technical difficulties of extracting the oil in the harsh climate but also the political and geopolitical altercations associated with the region. As production progresses through the phases, it will start off with 75,000 bopd and finally reach a peak production plateau of 1.2 million bopd sometime between 2015 and 2020. A big concern for the future is what will happen to oil from Kashagan which is the most ambitious attempt to date by Western companies to develop news supplies in the Caspian and may encounter strong opposition from Russia