MOSCOW, April 28 (RIA Novosti) – Russian oil giant Rosneft’s board of directors has approved new joint projects with ExxonMobil, the company said in a press release Monday.
The two companies will jointly develop two zones on the Russian continental shelf: Ust-Lensky in the Laptev Sea and Severo-Vrangelevsky-1 in the Chukchi Sea, the company said.
Rosneft and ExxonMobil have also agreed to cooperate in the exploration of the 200,000-square-kilometer Severo-Karsky block in the Kara Sea. The companies will use a special aircraft with an induction aeromagnetometer, an airborne gravimeter and a traffic guidance system to conduct a full geophysical exploration of the block.
In 2011, Russia’s Rosneft and US-based ExxonMobil agreed to expand their cooperation under a strategic cooperation agreement, which allocated some additional 600,000 square kilometers of exploration acreage in the Russian Arctic and provided for the potential participation by Rosneft in the Point Thomson project in Alaska. They also agreed to conduct a joint study on a potential LNG project in the Russian Far East.
The agreements include plans to explore seven new blocks in the Chukchi Sea, Laptev Sea and Kara Sea. The license blocks include Severo-Vrangelevsky-1, Severo-Vrangelevsky-2 and Yuzhno-Chukotsky blocks in the Chukchi Sea; Ust’ Oleneksky, Ust’ Lensky and Anisinsko-Novosibirsky blocks in the Laptev Sea; and Severo-Karsky block in the Kara Sea, which are among the most promising and least explored offshore areas globally. The American company has a one-third percent stake in the projects.
