Rosneft, Sinopec decide to drill 3rd well at Sakhalin-3
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK. Sept 27 (Interfax) - Russian oil company Rosneft and China's Sinopec have decided to drill a third well at the Veninsky block at Sakhalin-3 for the further determination of resources, RN-Far East chief Lev Brodsky announced at the Sakhalin Oil and Gas - 2011 conference.
The company, Brodsky said, has already listed this deposit's reserves with the State Reserves Commission. It has been reported that they come to around 49 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas.
"This deposit is rather efficient to develop, but nonetheless, our partner and we have decided to drill one more well - Severo-Veninskaya-3. The aim of this well is to reveal possible additional reserves in underlying horizons. The second aim is to make a more accurate model of this deposit," Brodsky said.
The drilling of this third well is planned for next year. Rosneft has extended the exploration license until the year after that.
Rosneft continues to study how feasible operations at the Kaigano-Vasyukansky section would be, work the company is doing with BP, he said.
"We opened the deposit Kaigano-Vasyukanskoye sea, but unfortunately our calculations showed that these reserves and the conditions they are located in, and that is deep ocean and distance from shore, are not at this point sufficient for commercial development," Brodsky said.
In order to resolve this problem and to arrive at a final decision on working this section, Rosneft is studying the prospects for a transit zone and the possible increase of resources in peripheral zones in the region in subjacent horizons, he said.
The implementation of a government plan to reduce the tax burden on shelf deposits could have a great impact on the making of the decision, he said.
Rosneft will soon begin testing the first well drilled at yet another section on the Sakhalin shelf - Lebedinsky, Brodsky said. The drilling of this well began this past May. "It has now reached its designed depth of 4,500 meters. We will begin testing it literally within several days," he said.
The drilling of a second well at the Lebedinsky section is planned for the fourth quarter of this year. "The Lebedinsky section has modest resources compared with such projects as Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2, but it could be sufficiently effective enough considering the possible use of Sakhalinmorneftegas infrastructure," Brodsky said.
Rosneft will next year begin 2D and 3D seismic surveys at Nekrasovsky in Astrakhan Sea. Exploratory drilling, in line with the licensing agreement, is planned to start in 2015.
Rosneft (74.9%) and Sinopec (25.1%) are together doing exploratory and prospecting work at the Veninsky licensed section. It is located on the Sakhalin shelf in the Sea of Okhotsk, covering 5,300 square kilometers. The sea depth at the section varies from 25 to 150 meters. Rosneft obtained the license for this work in April of 2003.
Sakhalin-5 is being implemented by Rosneft (51%) and BP (49%). This project involves the prospecting and development of two licensed sections on the Sakhalin shelf: Vostochno-Schmidtovsky and Kaigano-Vasyukansky. The latter lies on the northeastern part of the Sakhalin shelf, covering 7,200 square km and with water depth of 90-120 meters. Exploratory and prospecting work here has revealed thirty promising structures. The former section is also on the southeast part of the shelf and to the north of the Schmidt Peninsula. It covers 9,400 square km and the water here is also 90-120 meters deep.
