Karmorneftegaz – a joint venture between two oil giants Rosneft and Exxon – has begun drilling of Russia’s northernmost well in the Arctic.
The Universitetskaya-1 well in the Kara Sea was spudded on Saturday, August 9, and is expected to take two months to reach its planned depth.
“The start of exploratory drilling in the Kara Sea is the most important event of the year for the global oil and gas industry,” said Igor Sechin, president of Rosneft.
“As a result of this work we are planning to discover a new Kara sea oil province. Developing of the Arctic shelf has a huge multiplicative effect on the whole Russian economy.”
The drilling campaign was threatened by US and EU sanctions put on Russia in the light of its handling of the crisis in Ukraine.
The EU sanctions prohibit the export of technology intended for use in deepwater, Arctic and shale oil exploration and production, while US sanctions directly affect Rosneft’s access to its financial markets.
But the Universitetskaya drilling was still legally possible as the contract with the Norwegian company North Atlantic Drilling for the West Alpha rig had been signed before the sanctions were announced.
The discovery holds an estimated 1.3 billion tons of oil equivalent. It forms part of three East Prinovozemelskiy areaa, which contain around 30 structures with an entire resource base of 13 billion tonnes of oil equivalent.
Universitetskaya is the first of around 40 offshore wells Rosneft plans by 2018 to test the potential of the unexplored the Arctic Ocean.