By Raushan Nurshayeva
ASTANA, April 16 (Reuters) - China has shown an interest inbuying the stake of U.S. oil major ConocoPhillips in amultinational consortium developing Kazakhstan's giant Kashaganoilfield, Kazakh Oil & Gas Minister Sauat Mynbayev said onTuesday.
"Kazakhstan has not yet taken such a decision, but there issuch a possibility," Mynbayev told reporters. He declined to saywhich company or government body represented China in talks withKazakhstan over Kashagan.
Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest oil producer and thesecond-largest post-Soviet producer after Russia, has thepre-emptive right to buy out the 8.4-percent stake owned byConocoPhillips in Kashagan.
ConocoPhillips, which has been shedding overseas assets tocut debt and increase its investment in lower-cost domesticshale oil and gas, has said it intends to sell its Kashaganstake to India's state-run oil and Natural Gas Corp for about $5 billion.
Kazakhstan has until late May to decide whether to buy outthe stake of ConocoPhillips, and Mynbayev said that furtheroptions would depend on the terms to be proposed by otherparties also wishing to own this stake.
He declined to speculate whether India or China would have abetter chance of owning the stake.
"If the terms offered by one side are significantly betterthan those of the other potential buyer, then the logic (ofchoice) of the authorities of Kazakhstan will be crystal-clear,"Mynbayev said.
Kashagan, the world's biggest oilfield discovery in morethan 40 years, holds an estimated 30 billion barrels ofoil-in-place, of which 8 billion to 12 billion barrels arepotentially recoverable, with first production expected in themiddle of this year.
Kazakhstan, a vast nation of 17 million, is home to 3percent of the world's recoverable oil reserves. It has moved inrecent years to exert greater management control and securebigger revenues from foreign-owned oil and gas developments.
Kazakh state oil firm KazMunaiGas first entered the Kashaganconsortium in 2005 as a shareholder in 2005 and later doubledits stake to 16.81 percent.
Identical stakes are held by Italy's Eni, U.S.major ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell andFrance's Total. Japan's Inpex owns 7.56percent.