Tatneft to accelerate development of bitumen fields, invest 100 bln rubles by 2018
ALMETYEVSK. Dec 30 (Interfax) - Tatneft plans to invest 100 billion rubles in production of highly viscous oil, or bitumen, the Russian oil company's CEO, Nail Maganov said at a press conference on Monday.
He said the company is limited by the duration of special tax conditions. "This is a strategic area, it is one of the projects for which we don't intend to reduce financing. The investments in this project are huge - about 100 billion rubles. We think that the investment will be over three years. And it simply won't be possible to recover it in such a short period," Maganov said.
Drilling is now underway at nine blocks and next year the number will increase to 23. "We will steadily bring production to 2 million tonnes," Maganov said.
There are plans to produce 445,000 tonnes of bitumen in 2015 and double production in 2016 and 2017. It was reported earlier that the company planned to increase production of bitumen to 300,000 tonnes in 2015 and to 1 million tonnes by 2020. Tatneft is therefore dramatically accelerating work on the project and ramping up production.
Maganov also said that Russian technology is used for the development of bitumen fields, from prospecting for oil to refining.
He also said that the company has plans to increase reserves with shale oil. "A program of trial operations is now underway. It has been approved, financing has been opened and we have almost moved from a program of research to production of oil," Maganov said.
The first results were obtained at an old vertical well that was converted to production of shale oil. A horizontal well will soon be drilled for this purpose.
Tatneft deputy CEO and chief geologist Rais Khisamov said at the press conference that Tatneft has placed 30 million tonnes of shale oil (oil in tight Domanic deposits) on the state register.
"This year, for the first time in Russia, we defended reserves in Domanic deposits. We obtained an increase of about 30 million tonnes on Domanic deposits for this year. This is shale oil," Khisamov said.
He said the terminology of shale oil was defined for the first time. "We've defined, confirmed in the state committee for reserves what is included in Domanic deposits. In other words, there is now an understanding in Russia of what shale oil or Domanic deposits are for the European part of Russia. Our Domanic is for the European part [of Russia] what Bazhenov is for Western Siberia," Khisamov said.