Despite Western sanctions against Moscow because of the Ukraine crisis, Russian oil major Rosneft and Norway’s Statoil have launched a controversial exploratory drilling in the Norwegian sector of the Barents Sea.
On August 18, Rosneft said the first exploration well Pingvin-1 will be drilled by the Transocean Spitsbergen rig. The water depth is 422 metres and the drilling target total vertical depth is 1,516 metres.
The companies expect to analyse the drilling results until the end of this year, Rosneft said.
“The start of these exploration operations marks an important milestone in developing the cooperation between Rosneft and Statoil,” Rosneft said.
Last week, Statoil received approval from the government to move the Transocean rig, Spitsbergen, to the area. Statoil was the target of acampaign from Greenpeace, which said exploration in the Arctic waters of the Barents Sea puts the region's ecology at risk.
Rosneft joined a project to develop the Norwegian continental shelf in the Barents Sea in June 2013, following the results of a tender, in which it was granted a 20% stake in four fields.
A year earlier, Rosneft and Statoil signed an agreement on the joint extraction of hydrocarbons in promising areas in the Barents and Okhotsk Seas in 2016-2018.
Rosneft is also jointly extracting hydrocarbons with the Anglo-Dutch Shell under the Sakhalin-II oil and gas project off Russia’s Pacific coast and with US energy giant ExxonMobil for developing the continental shelf of the Kara and Black Seas.
Norway has joined the EU in enforcing tough measures against Russia over its role in Ukraine. Rosneft and its CEO Igor Sechin have been targeted in the sanctions.
As part of the sanctions, the European Union has banned equipment and technology exports for new projects in deep water, Arctic or shale oil for one year.
TheArcticis seen as a leading source for future oil and gas production. Rosneft also has an agreement with Norway’s North Atlantic Drilling to drill for oil in Russian offshore Arctic.
Russia, the world’s top oil producer with a daily average of around 10.5 million barrels per day, is counting on new hydrocarbon resources, including those in Arctic, to at least maintain production, a cornerstone of its budget revenues.
But a fall in the price of Urals crude oil, the benchmark on which Russia bases its budget calculations, is adding to the government’s problems at a time when western sanctions are already hurting the economy.
On August 18, Urals fell below $100 per barrel for the first time in 15 months and was trading just below $97 on August 19.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/rosneft-norway-ready-barents-sea-drill-bits