Rosneft starts production drilling at Vostok Oil's Paiyakhskoye field

IGARKA. July 26 (Interfax) - Rosneft has begun production drilling at the Vostok Oil project's Paiyakhskoye field on the Taimyr Peninsula.

"The stage of production drilling begins today. Production [well] clusters are beginning to be drilled, meaning the project is moving from the stage of geological exploration to the stage of production. These are already production wells that will then be tied into pipelines and produce oil," Vostok Oil general director Vladimir Chernov told reporters.

Oil deliveries from the field will begin in 2024, he said. "By 2027, there will already be a good result - up to 50 million tonnes from the Vostok Oil project will be delivered to world markets along the Northern Sea Route," Chernov said.

Drilling began at the Irkinsky licensed area of the Paiyakhskoye field. The well depth will be 3.5 kilometers. The project is using Arctic class drilling digs built by the Ural-Siberia Industrial Company (USPK), which are capable of drilling to a depth of 6 km.

Vostok Oil, Rosneft's flagship project on the Taimyr Peninsula, includes 52 licensed areas in the northern part of Krasnoyarsk Territory and in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. They have 13 discovered oil and gas fields, including the Vankor group of fields already being developed and new ones. The project's resource base is estimated at 6.2 billion tonnes of liquid hydrocarbons.

Rosneft began large-scale development of fields on Taimyr as part of the Vostok Oil project in 2020. The 52 licensed areas include the Vankorskoye, Suzunskoye, Tagulskoye and Lodochnoye fields, as well as the new fields Paiyakhskoye, with reserves of more than 1 billion tonnes of oil, and Zapadno-Irkinskoye with 0.5 billion tonnes of oil.

The project's production could potentially total 115 million tonnes of liquid hydrocarbons per year. Rosneft has promised to ship 30 million tonnes of oil from Vostok Oil along the Northern Sea Route in 2024.

Rosneft subsidiary RN Trade LLC owns 85% of Vostok Oil, and the consortium of Vitol S.A. and Mercantile & Maritime Energy Pte. Ltd. (75% owned by Vitol and 25% by MME) owns 5% that are held by Amur Investments. A 10% stake in the project was owned by trader Trafigura, which in mid-July sold it to Nord Axis Limited, an independent trading company registered in Hong Kong.