MOSCOW, August 13 (RIA Novosti) – Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Russia’s state-owned gas monopoly, has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with US energy services giant Halliburton to facilitate technological exchanges that will help increase production, the Russian company said Tuesday.
“One aspect of cooperation will be special technical seminars for employees of Gazprom Neft, with the aim of getting to know the main ways in which Halliburton uses its technology,” Gazprom Neft said in a statement posted on its website. “Some of the most important topics will concern work with tight oil reserves, unconventional resources and deep-water drilling.”
The agreement is the latest development in an increasingly close relationship between Russia’s Gazprom, which controls over 95 percent of Gazprom Neft, and the US contractor. Last year Halliburton signed a similar agreement with Gazprom International, the gas monopoly’s international arm, and in May last year Halliburton won a $95 million tender from Gazprom Neft to complete 12 wells being drilled by the company in Iraq.
A Gazprom Neft spokesperson told RIA Novosti on Tuesday that there was no link between the Halliburton-Gazprom Neft agreement and the Halliburton-Gazprom International one.
Halliburton, which claims on its website to have been involved in exploiting more than 80 percent of the world’s deep-water hydrocarbon discoveries, was a contractor on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 when the rig exploded, killing 11 people and causing the worst oil spill in US history. The company admitted in July that it had destroyed evidence about its involvement in the disaster.
In the face of declining production at West Siberian fields, Russia is looking to begin the development of its offshore energy resources in the Arctic. Campaigners and ecologists have repeatedly warned that a rush to drill in Russia’s northern waters could cause potentially devastating accidents and ruin the pristine Arctic environment.
Gazprom Neft does not have the necessary official status to work on offshore projects in Russia’s Arctic, but earlier this year the company said it was looking to acquire Gazprom Neft Shelf, the Gazprom subsidiary that owns the rights to the Prirazlomnoye field in the Pechora Sea off Russia’s northern coast, according to Russian media reports. Production operations are due to begin at Prirazlomnoye this year.
The spokesperson for Gazprom Neft said that deep-water drilling was only "one of the possible areas of cooperation" with Halliburton.
Gazprom Neft, Russia's fourth-largest oil company, produced 30.6 million tons of oil equivalent in the first six months of this year, and is aiming to increase its annual output to 100 million tons of oil equivalent by 2020.
