Russia's state controlled gas firm OAO Gazprom (GAZP.RS) is planning to explore and develop 16 mineral sites on the Karsk shelf, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Black Sea over the next three years, the RBC Daily reported Monday citing an unnamed source in the company.
The 16 deposits, which are estimated to hold more than 40 billion metric tons of fuel equivalent or about half of total fuel reserves on the Russian shelf, include three blocks of Sakhalin-3 located in Russia's Far East, one of which the country's top oil producer, state-controlled OAO Rosneft (ROSN.RS), is also interested in.
In May, it was reported that Gazprom and Rosneft had signed an agreement on sharing Arctic and Far Eastern offshore hydrocarbon fields.