Rosneft ups financing for innovation by 15% to 170 bln rubles in 2014
MOSCOW. Sept 8 (Interfax) - Rosneft's overall financing for innovation totalled more than 170 billion rubles in 2014, including 33.2 billion rubles for research and development, the Russian state oil company said in a statement.
Rosneft spent 148.1 billion rubles on innovation, including 23.2 billion rubles on R&D, in 2013, according to the company's annual report.
Most of the spending on R&D was channelled into testing and introducing previously developed technology, Rosneft said. As part of a project to develop technology to develop tight gas deposits, construction of a well with multistage fracking was completed for the first time in Russia at Turon; testing resulted in a flow of more than 200,000 cubic meters per day, the company said. The developed technology will make it possible to bring more than 750 bcm of gas reserves into profitable development.
A pilot batch of high performance Fischer-Tropsch synthesis catalysts has been produced, the company said. This catalyst is needed for the development of the company's own GTL technology, which makes it possible to process natural/associated gas into fuel ad oil product components with high added value, including at Rosneft fields, the company said.
Two major expeditions were carried out as part of studies in the Arctic last year - Kara-Winter 2014 and Kara-Summer 2014 - to study the ice situation and conduct hydrometeorological studies to support the implementation of projects to explore and develop hydrocarbon resources in the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukotka seas. The cost of the studies in 2014 exceeded 780 million rubles.
These were the "largest expeditions in a little-studied area of the Arctic since the collapse of the USSR," Rosneft said.
Russian gas giant Gazprom has reported that it spent 10.82 billion rubles on R&D in 2014.
The capital expenditures of oil company Bashneft , for example, totaled 48.3 billion rubles in 2014. Rosneft's financing for innovation in 2014 was therefore equivalent to 3.5 Bashneft investment programs.
