Equinor Sanctions Siberian Project
Norway’s Equinor and its Russian partner Rosneft have taken a final investment decision on developing the North-Komsomolskoye oil and gas field in Western Siberia, the pair announced on December 23.
“This is an important milestone in the joint project that we have been working on for seven years,” Equinor’s manager for Russia, Elisabeth Birkeland Kvalheim, commented in a statement.
North-Komsomolskoye, situated in the Yamalo-Nenets region, was brought on stream in 1995 and produced 125,100 mt of oil, 7,760 mt of condensate and 43.7mn m3 of gas in the third quarter of 2019, according to Rosneft data. Equinor and Rosneft partnered up in 2012 to appraise North-Komsomolskoye’s PK1 formation, as well as work at other joint projects. They launched trial production at PK1 in 2015.
Equinor owns a 33.3% stake in the project’s operating company, SevKomNeftegaz, while Rosneft controls 66.7%. Over the coming years the partners will drill wells up to 2,000 metres in depth and build oil and gas treatment facilities and other infrastructure, according to Rosneft.