RusEnergy

KRASNOYARSK, May 12 (RIA Novosti) - Rosneft plans to invest $1 billion to develop the Vankor oil and gas field in Siberia this year, and launch production in fall 2008, a company vice president said Friday. Stepan Zemlyuk said oil from the Vankor deposits will be pumped to the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, an ambitious multibillion-dollar project to send Russian hydrocarbons to energy-hungry Asia-Pacific region countries that will come online in 2008. Speaking at a regional economic forum, Zemlyuk said that under current plans the deposit, in Krasnoyarsk Territory, is expected to yield around 19 million metric tons annually (382,000 bbl/d), but that the 13 licensed sites surrounding the deposit could bring total production up to 50 million tons (1 mln bbl/d). "If we manage to implement the project in this way, we will be looking at a production level of 50 million tons, which will be far more lucrative," he said. The state-owned oil company has been working at the field for more than two years, investing 2 billion rubles ($74 million) in 2004 and roughly 6 billion rubles ($222 million) in 2005. The company's next project will be the East-Sugdinsk deposit in the Katangsk district of the Irkutsk Region, for which Rosneft acquired the subsoil license in mid-December 2005 for 7.47 bln rubles ($276 mln). East Siberia and the Far East are currently Russia's most promising regions for hydrocarbon production, Zemlyuk said. The Vankorsky oil-and-gas field, discovered in 1988, is in the Turukhansky Region of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, 130 km west of the river port city of Igarka. Prospecting conducted in 2004 indicated recoverable oil reserves of 41.5 million tons for C1 category and 185.4 million tons for C2 category , with gas reserves of 28.2 billion cu m (C1) and 61.6 billion cu m (C2).