By Fatma Babayeva

Kazakhstan has yet to decide whether to participate in the Doha meeting, which will bring together the world's major oil powers on April 17 in effort to support oil prices.

The country's energy ministry confirmed Trend news agency about receiving an invitation for the event in the Qatari capital, but abstained to make any comment about Kazakhstan's decision in this regard.

The next meeting between the OPEC members and countries outside the cartel in Doha is expected to develop a mechanism to freeze crude production to the level of January 2016 that will actually allow making prices rise for the second half of the year.

If oil producers can freeze oil output , it is expected to balance demand and supply of oil in the market and make oil prices rise again.

Kazakhstan's Energy Ministry said sharp freezing of oil production in the country is not on the agenda, but the country plans to reduce the crude production for technical reasons in 2016. Kazakhstan plans to produce less than previous years, extracting 74 million tons of oil in 2016 compared to 79.46 million tons of oil in 2015.

For now Kazakhstan could keep the current level of production stable based on the technical capabilities and geological conditions of the oil and gas fields, the ministry added.

Earlier, Vladimir Shkolnik, former Energy Minister of Kazakhstan, said that Kazakhstan plans to compensate the reduction of oil production in the country by opening the Kashagan field in the market in the future.

The launch of Kashagan field is scheduled for autumn 2016, according to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).

The commercial production of 75,000 barrels of oil from the Kashagan field will be realized in 1.5 months after its commencement.

According to BP Statistical review of world energy for 2015, Kazakhstan held 1.8 percent of the world's total proved oil reserves and 1.9 percent of the world's total oil production.

Russia and Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producers, together with Qatar and Venezuela have agreed to freeze production at January levels in Doha on February 16. The states set a goal to maintain average production at the level of January 2016, but there was a condition “if other producers will join this initiative as well”.

Previously, Saudi Arabian Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that his country would not agree to the deal without similar action on the part of Iran.

At the same time, Tehran has repeatedly stated that it intends to increase the volume of oil production in order to regain the market share that it lost after the imposition of sanctions against it.

Countries like Ecuador, Algeria, Nigeria, Oman and Kuwait have already expressed their willingness to join to the act of freezing oil production.