Intelligence confirmed

Rosneft has almost doubled the reserves of the Vankor field

The state company Rosneft yesterday answered a question about why it will not allow anyone near the Vankor oil field in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. As Mikhail Skvortsov, head of the company's geological exploration, licensing and field development department, told Interfax, oil reserves amount to 490 million tons, while at the beginning of 2006 this figure was 270 million tons. “The new indicators were defended before a qualified commission (Rosnedr - Ed. ) at the end of last week,” he said. Now it becomes clear why Rosneft President Sergei Bogdanchikov said last summer that the company would develop this field independently and will not allow foreigners to approach it. Previously, as is known, the French Total laid claim to Vankor, but lost the option for a 52% stake in the project, having lost all the courts. Recently, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov proposed that Indian companies invest in the Vankor field. but following Vladimir Putin’s visit, it was reported that Indian companies discussed with Rosneft only joint work on the Sakhalin-3 project.

Rosneft acquired the Vankor field in 2003 by absorbing Anglo Siberian Oil Company (ASOC). In the early 2000s, licenses for the Vankor and North-Vankor oil blocks were held by the Yeniseineft and Taimyrneft companies, which were part of ASOC. In the summer of 2003, Anglo Siberian agreed to sell Total a 52% stake in Yeniseineft and a 60% stake in Taimyrneft. But the deal was never finalized, since almost immediately after this, ASOC itself was absorbed by Rosneft. Total decided to continue negotiations with the state-owned company, but did not achieve success. As a result, in 2004, the French company sued Anglo Siberian, demanding the exercise of options on the Vankor projects. Details of the legal proceedings became known only in May last year from Rosneft’s report for the first quarter under US GAAP, according to which Total demanded $640 million in compensation from Anglo Siberian. Rosneft disputed these claims, citing the fact that “the conditions under which the sale should have been carried out did not occur,” the report said. The main hearings on the claims were completed at the end of 2005. And in October last year, the Brussels arbitration court decided that Total had no grounds to demand a share in the fields.

Meanwhile, Rosneft actively invested in geological exploration of the field and its development. At the end of last year, it even exceeded its own plan by $200 million, having invested $1 billion. And the company’s president, Sergei Bogdanchikov, said a month ago that he would call Vankor “not a field, but a group of fields where Rosneft has over the past three year, the resource base has increased to such an extent that it is now quite correct to talk about the opening of the first oil and gas province in the post-Soviet period.” “When we acquired this asset, the proven reserves of the Vankor field were estimated at only 40 million tons,” he said. - Today we have proven that oil reserves here exceed 400 million tons. Natural gas reserves are more than 100 billion cubic meters. Thus, a sufficient raw material base has been created to have a very high level of production here for a long time. And today we can confidently talk about plans to produce about 30 million tons of oil per year. This is a unique project for Russia, and on a global scale it is one of the ten largest oil and gas projects currently being implemented.”

Rosnedra yesterday confirmed to Vremya Novostey that reserves have increased at the Vankor field. “At the beginning of this year, Rosneft already passed the state examination (of these reserves - Ed. ) and now puts this data on the balance sheet of Rosgeolfond,” said a source in the agency. — This is not surprising, since the company is currently conducting detailed additional exploration of this deposit. So it is possible that next year Vankor’s reserves will be able to increase even more.” At the same time, the source noted that a similar picture is now emerging for many Russian fields where geological exploration work is underway.

Troika Dialog analyst Valery Nesterov says that the increase in reserves of the Vankorskoye field puts it on a par with such Russian giants as Samotlorskoye, Romashkinskoye and Priobskoye. The oil at the Vankor field, according to him, has a fairly low sulfur content. At the same time, according to his data, the initial geological reserves of Vankor amounted to 7.3 billion barrels (about 1 billion tons) of oil equivalent. And this is only for the Vankor and North-Vankor fields, he says, which were recently recognized as one field. “But in this region, Rosneft has licenses for another 14 blocks, there are another 5 billion barrels (almost 700 million tons - Ed. ) of reserves,” Mr. Nesterov points out.

In connection with the growth of reserves, Mr. Bogdanchikov recently spoke about a sharp increase in investment in the project. So far, Rosneft has invested $1.5 billion in the project, and the same amount is expected by the end of this year. Although previously the company planned to invest only $1 billion this year (which is a third of all Rosneft investments). The need to actively develop this project arose because, says Mr. Bogdanchikov, oil from the Vankor field should fill the first stage of the pipeline from Eastern Siberia to the Pacific coast. At the same time, thanks to exploration and subsequent production in 14 areas near the Vankor field, according to him, it will be possible to fill the second stage of this oil pipeline, i.e., increase pumping to 80 million tons per year.

Nikolay GORELOV