Sakhalin-1 Consortium Starts Oil Production at Project's Third Field

MOSCOW, January 19 (Sputnik) – Companies participating in the international oil project Sakhalin-1 have started oil production at the project’s third oil field, Arkutun-Dagi, Russian energy company Rosneft stated on its website Monday.

The deputy head of ExxonMobil Development Company, a participant in the consortium, congratulated the team on the opening.

“I congratulate the team for the safe and successful development of Sakhalin-1’s third field, Arkutun-Dagi. The start-up of this field will continue to add to the benefits the community is receiving through the development of the Sakhalin-1 project,” Exxon’s James Flood was quoted as saying on Rosneft website.

Arkutun-Dagi will bring the total daily amount of extracted oil at all three Sakhalin-1 fields to more than 27,000 metric tons, according to the Rosneft statement, with annual production capacity reaching 4.5 million metric tons. Production at the Berkut platform will provide about $9 billion for Russia’s regional and state budget in the next 10 years, Rosneft stated.

Arkutun-Dagi is the latest of the Sakhalin-1 oil fields to come on stream, following the Chayvo field, which started operations in 2005, and the Odoptu field, which was launched in 2010.

Sakhalin-1 is a large-scale project, carried out under a production sharing agreement (PSA), signed in 1996. The production is being carried out on the northeastern shelf of Sakhalin Island. The project involves four participants – Russian Rosneft, which owns a 20-percent share in the project, US company ExxonMobil, which owns 30 percent, Japanese Sodeco with 30 percent, and the Indian ONGC Videsh, which has a 20-percent share.