YAKUTSK, September 1 (RIA Novosti) – Russian oil giant Rosneft plans to spend some $3 billion on geological surveys over the next four years on the shelves of the Sea of Okhotsk and the Chukchi Sea, the company’s CEO Igor Sechin said Monday.
“Between 2014 and 2018 we will increase expenses on the geological survey of the shelves of the Sea of Okhotsk toward Magadan, and the Chukchi Sea. These expenses will cost more than 112 billion rubles,” Sechin said during a meeting headed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the development of the country’s Far East.
According to Sechin, the company is currently extracting 34 million tons of oil annually in the fields, and the development of prospective fields will allow an increase in extraction of more than 30 million tons.
Rosneft is one of the Russian companies targeted by sanctions imposed by Western countries. The European Union sanctions prohibit exporting to Russia technologies and equipment for deep water and Arctic oil exploration and production, as well as shale oil projects. Sanctions implemented by the United States ban future contracts on supplying Russia with technologies and equipment for hydrocarbon development.
Rosneft is the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. The main shareholder of Rosneft is Rosneftegaz, a state-owned company, while British oil giant BP owns almost 20 percent.
