Rosneft, Sinopec JV receives license for North-Veninskoye field near Sea of ??Okhotsk
MOSCOW. May 30 (Interfax) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed an order to issue LLC Venineft, a joint venture between Rosneft and the Chinese petroleum and petrochemical corporation Sinopec, licenses to explore for and extract raw hydrocarbons at the North-Veninskoye gas condensate field near the Sea of ??Okhotsk, according to the government's website.
Venineft presented evidence from the Russian Federal Subsurface Resources Agency (Rosnedra) from July 20, 2010 affirming the discovery of the North-Veninskoye gas condensate field, located at the Sakhalin shelf of the Sea of ??Okhotsk. Additionally, the JV submitted a request to receive usage rights for the field.
The company paid 87.2 million rubles for the section.
The Russian state oil major owns 74.9% of the Veninsky block project, and Sinopec owns 25.1%. The operator and owner of the exploration license is their joint venture LLC Venineft.
Forecast recoverable resources are estimated at 17.2 million tonnes of oil and 238 bcm of gas. In 2003-2010, in line with license obligations, the company did 980 square km of 3D seismic surveys and 125.5 linear km of 2D seismics, and drilled four exploration wells, discovering the Severo-Veninskoye field with C1+C2 reserves of 49.02 bcm of gas and 1.21 million tonnes of condensate. It was previously announced that Sinopec wanted to leave the project. The governor of the Sakhalin region later stated that the Chinese company would remain a part of the project, but its stake in investments could fall to 25%.
Rosneft and Sinopec have agreed to optimize the project. This includes working out the issue of gas shipments for Rosneft's future liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Sakhalin.
