Chinese conglomerate CITIC may be forced to sell to Kazakhstan part of the stake in oil assets it is trying to buy from Canada’s Nations Energy Co in order to secure the deal, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

State-owned China International Trust and Investment Corp and Nations Energy are aiming to sign an agreement on the sale of 1.91 billion dollars worth of assets in Kazakhstan by December 20, the newspaper said.

Senior government officials from China, Kazakhstan and Russia are then due in Beijing, but a final agreement may fail because the Kazakhstan government does not want to relinquish control of key energy assets.

“The biggest uncertainty of the deal is how much of the oil assets CITIC agrees to sell back to the Kazakhstan government. If both parties agree on this issue, the deal will have no problem going ahead,” the report cited the unnamed source as saying.

In October, CITIC agreed to acquire the Kazakh assets following months of negotiations.

The deal would give CITIC control of the Karazhanbas oil field in western Kazakhstan, which has proven reserves of more than 340 million barrels of crude oil, the companies said previously.

Nations Energy’s Kazakh subsidiary, JSC Karazhanbasmunai, holds the rights until 2020 to develop the Karazhanbas Oil and Gas Field in Mangistau Oblast, Kazakhstan.

The deal was first thrown into doubt when Kazakh Oil and Energy Minister Baktykozha Izmukhambetov said in televised remarks that he intended to block the transaction.

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