Rosneft discovers possibly biggest oil deposit offshore Eastern Arctic

Russian state-owned oil major Rosneft has discovered an oil field in the Laptev Sea in the Eastern Artic as a result of the drilling at the Khatanga licence block. Russian Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Sergei Donskoi said that the oil fields discovered by the firm could be the biggest on the shelf.

“My sincere congratulations to my colleagues! We can already speak about a significant inflow of oil, and thus, about a unique discovery of what’s likely to be the biggest oil field on the shelf,” Donskoi posted on his official Facebook page.

The license to develop the Khatanga site was received by Rosneft in November 2015. In early April 2017, the company began drilling the well called “Central Olginskaya-1.”

The license area is located in the Khatangsky Bay of the Laptev Sea in the north of Krasnoyarsk Territory.

At 17,217 square kilometers, the site is vast. In total, Rosneft owns 28 licensed sites on the Arctic shelf with total resources of 34 billion tons of oil equivalent.

Since 2012, Rosneft’s investments in the development of the Arctic shelf have amounted to about RUB100 billion. The company plans to increase the volume of investments for these purposes to RUB250 billion between now and 2021.