Gazprom, KazMunayGas prepare to prospect Imashevskoye deposit
MOSCOW. Sept 14 (Interfax) - A joint venture set up by Gazprom and KazMunayGas, KazRosGas, is ready to being geological prospecting operations at the Imashevskoye deposit, a Gazprom press release issued after Gazprom chief Alexei Miller met with his KazRosGas counterpart Kairat Boranbayev.
The Imashevskoye gas condensate deposit is located 60 kilometers to the northeast of Astrakhan in Russian territory and 250 km to the southwest of Atyrau in Kazakhstan's Kurmangazy District. Its projected reserves top 100 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas with 15%-17% hydrogen disulfide content. The Russian part of the deposit is currently listed in the country's undistributed resource fund.
In June of 2002, Gazprom and KazMunayGas set up KazRosGas on a parity basis and registered it in Kazakhstan. The JV buys and markets natural gas and has it processed at Russian gas refineries, among its other operations. KazRosGas is the operator of the Imashevskoye deposit.
Russia and Kazakhstan signed on September 7 last year an intergovernmental agreement on joint efforts in the geological study and prospecting of the trans-border Imashevskoye deposit, an agreement that took force this January. It provides for a calculating of resource reserves after the study and prospecting are completed.