Rosneft wins licence off Sakhalin
Russian oil firm Rosneft has been awarded a development licence for a 25,000-km2 area off the northern tip of Sakhalin island in the Far East, the government reported on April 22 in its official legal portal.
The licence covers exploration and production activity at the Severo-Sakhalinsky block, situated in the Sakhalin gulf separating the north of Sakhalin island from continental Russia. Rosneft received it without having to participate in a tender.
Severo-Sakhalinsky is estimated by Russian authorities to hold over 41mn metric tons of oil and around 550bn m3 of natural gas in inferred resources, according to Russia's classification system.
Rosneft is partnered with ExxonMobil in the Sakhalin-1 project, one of the largest upstream developments in the area. Its subsidiary Sakhalinmorneftegaz also operates dozens of mature oil and gas fields on and offshore. Severo-Sakhalinsky borders the West-Schmidtovsky block, which Rosneft had been exploring with BP until the UK major's departure in 2012. It also drilled two wells in the Sea of Okhotsk with Norway's Equinor in 2016, but both were dry.