Under the contract, which must be signed within 30 days, Tatneft will have access to a 2,000-square-kilometer deposit in the country's central region.
International oil companies, including ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Total, BP, Shell, CNPC, and ONGC, and Russian companies Gazprom, LUKoil, and NGK Itera, bid on the tender, which was announced by Libya's state-owned National Oil Corporation (NOC).
Tatneft, Russia's sixth largest oil producer and No. 32 in the world, extracts 512,000 barrels per day from 77 deposits, including the Romashkinskoye oilfield, one of the world's largest. Tatneft ranks No. 21 for proved reserves. Its annual oil production totals 25 million metric tons and natural gas, more than 700 million cubic meters.