Rosnedra sees huge potential for Rosgeo on foreign markets, particularly Asia, Africa

MOSCOW. Oct 21 (Interfax) - Russian state exploration company Rosgeo has huge potential on foreign markets, particularly in African and Asian countries, the acting head of the Federal Subsurface Resources Agency (Rosnedra), Yevgeny Petrov said in an interview with Kommersant published on Thursday.

"These are foremost African and Asian countries, where there is demand for participation of Russian companies in various stages of geological exploration. We can fill this niche. Competencies are needed and we have them in this country, easily scalable technological solutions are needed, which we also have in the country in various degrees of development. This is not just geological exploration technologies, but also information technology," Petrov said.

He also said that countries with substantial government debt to Russia could grant Russian companies the right to prospect and explore for mineral resources at their own expense and subsequently develop discovered resources toward repayment of state debt.

"This would create a mining industry in these countries, with part of the revenue going toward repayment of state debt, expand the international field of operations of Russian companies and be an effective instrument of Russian soft power. Everybody wins," Petrov said.

Rosgeo CEO Sergei Gorkov spoke earlier in an interview with RBC about a number of promising projects abroad. "We're about to do one of the biggest intelligence projects for the United Arab Emirates - to interpret and reassess seismics done over the past 30 years. There is a very large amount of information there, amounting to petabytes, for which we'll have to use not one but even two supercomputers," Gorkov said.

Rosgeo is also working on updating geological information on Africa left from the Soviet era, he said. "We're trying to update this information, primarily on solid mineral resources, and offer our comprehensive geology services to countries such as Algeria, Sudan, Benin, Equatorial Guinea and Angola. We're starting field work in Sudan on November 1 - the prospecting objective is mapping," Gorkov said.

The company is also working on projects in Uzbekistan and Mongolia, carrying out a seismic contract in the North Sea with ION Geophysical, and discussing potential opportunities to work offshore in Myanmar.