Page 15 - FSU OGM Week 26

FSUOGM PROJECTS & COMPANIES FSUOGM

Russian producers team up to target

hard-to-recover reserves

RUSSIA RUSSIAN oil producers Gazprom Neft, Lukoil technological challenges involved in developing
and Tatneft have teamed up to develop hard- hard-to-recover hydrocarbons,” Gazprom Neft’s
Gazprom Neft, to-recover reserves in Russia’s Orenburg region deputy CEO for upstream operations, Vadim
Lukoil and Tatneft bordering Kazakhstan. Yakovlev, commented.
are combined their The companies have formed a joint venture Russian oil producers are having to turn to
expertise to develop for the project, known as New Oil Production increasingly challenging oil and gas projects for
challenging projects. Technologies, which has rights to the Savitsky new sources of production, as easier-to-develop
and Zhuravlevsky licence blocks. Each partner fields reach maturity and then depletion. Gaz-
has a one-third stake in the venture. prom Neft, Lukoil and Tatneft are all struggling
The drilling of a first appraisal well at the with flagging output levels at key projects in
900-square km Savitsky block is nearing com- Russia’s older Volga-Urals and Western Siberian
pletion, Gazprom Neft said in a statement on basins. But offsetting this decline will be less of
June 29. The plan is to drill six such wells, with a priority as long as Russia remains a part of the
horizontal sections. The partners will also OPEC+ deal, under which it has committed to
undertake geophysical studies, having already making unprecedented cuts to supply over the
acquired 880 square km of 3D seismic data at next two years.
the site.
The 120-square km Zhuravlevsky block is Gazprom Neft goes deeper
adjacent to Savitsky and contains the Zhurav- In other news, Gazprom Neft said on June 30 it
levskoye oilfield, discovered in 1965 but currently had obtained licences to explore deeper zones at
mothballed. Its in-place reserves are estimated at four of its oilfields in the Yamalo-Nenets region
2.5mn tonnes (18.3mn barrels), and potentially of Western Siberia.
some more hard-to-recover resources. The fields – Vyngapurovskoye, Sugmutskoye,
The work at Zhuralevsky will run between Sredne-Iturskoye and North-Yangtinskoye –
2020 and 2023 and will entail the collection of may contain more than 102mn tonnes (748mn
118 square km of 3D seismic data and the drill- barrels) of oil in these strata, Gazprom Neft said
ing of a prospecting well targeting conventional in a statement on June 30. The biggest potential is
reserves. A second well will be drilled with the in Achimov layers at the Sugmutskoye and Vyn-
aim of tapping into hard-to-recover reserves. gapurovskoye fields, it said, where up to 80mn
Trial development of both sites is due to com- tonnes of oil could be recovered.
mence in 2024, Gazprom Neft said. Gazprom Neft has received seven-year
“This new joint venture will be the first such licences for the fields. It will approve an explo-
example in Russia of three leading vertically ration plan involving seismic surveys and explo-
integrated oil companies bring together their ration and appraisal drilling, in the near future,
resources and skills to address the complex it said.™

Week 26 01•July•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P15