Rosneft postpones Kara Sea drilling

Feb. 3, 2015
Rosneft says it will postpone operations in the Kara Sea until 2016, according to a Reuters report. 

Offshore staff

MOSCOW –Rosneft says it will postpone operations in the Kara Sea until 2016, according to a Reuters report. At that point operations will depend upon whether a suitable drilling rig can be contracted.

Rosneft already canceled contracts on several offshore support vessels in late 2014.

This move comes afterExxonMobil left the project following US Treasury Department sanctions against cooperating with Russia on Arctic exploration.

It also follows reports of a discovery of the new Pobeda oil and gas field on the Kara Sea shelf at theUniversitetskaya 1 well, said to be the northernmost well ever drilled. The well was drilled in open-water conditions – at the 74th circle of longitude, 250 km (155 mi) off the Russian Federation.

Rosneft has reported Pobeda reserves at 130 MM tons of oil and 499 bcm of gas. The gas is in the chalk deposits of Cenomanian Age and Apt-Alb Age, the oil reserves are in Jurassic sediments.

02/03/2015