Russia’s third-largest crude oil producing company Surgutneftegaz said on Tuesday it had launched production at a greenfield in East Siberia, a region crucial for stable oil output in the world’s top energy producer. The company, located in the West Siberian city of Surgut, said it started oil output at North-Talakanskoye field in the Sakha Republic. Production at the field is expected at 800,000 tonnes (16,000 barrels per day) in 2013. North-Talakanskoye is the third field commissioned by Surgutneftegaz in Yakutia, as the Sakha Republic is also called, after it launched Talakanskoye in 2008 and Alinskoye a year later.
At 3,103,200 square kilometres (1,198,200 sq mi), the Sakha Republic is not only the largest region on the territory of the Russian Federation but also the largest subnational entity in the world; over 40% of it lies beyond the Arctic Circle. The region is by right called the treasury of Russia. In fact, Yakutia accounts for 26% of the world’s diamonds, 5% of tin resources, 4.5% of antimony resources, 3.4% of uranium resources, 2% of iron ore resources and 2.5% of the world’s forests, but the republic possesses as well considerable reserves of oil and natural gas. Not surprisingly, Yakutia is second after Sakhalin Oblast among Far East’s regions by volume of foreign investments.
After the launching of a “Scheme of Complex Development of Productive Forces, Transport and Power Industry till 2020,” Russian and international investors’ interest for Yakutia increased dramatically. As of 2007, when the memorandum was released, the republic presented its economy in many international investment forums, such as the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, the Pacific Economic Congress in Vladivostok, the Far Eastern Economic Forum in Khabarovsk and the Kuban-2007 International Investment Forum in Sochi. Yakutia has also had successful presentations in China, South Korea and Japan, and Asian economies seems actually to present the most profitable trading opportunities for both Yakutsk and Moscow.
In 2012-2015, Gazprom expects to explore gas fields on the Yamal Peninsula in Eastern Siberia and build a gas route from Yakutia to Vladivostok. As explained by the head of the National Energy Institute Sergei Pravosudov, “Gazprom has to win new markets. Previously, the focus was mainly on Europe but Asian routes are offering lucrative solutions as well. Energy consumption is on the rise in China, so Russian gas will certainly be in great demand there. Now that Japan has been rejecting the idea of nuclear power plants, an increasing amount of gas will be consumed there, too. It means that the new projects are vitally important.”
Gazprom’s agenda for the coming years includes the Yakutia–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok pipeline, expected to transport Yakutia’s gas to Primorsky Krai and Far East countries. The pipeline will start from the Chayandinskoye oil and gas field in Yakutia, partly running within an integrated corridor with the second stage of Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline to Khabarovsk, where it will be finally connected with the Sakhalin–Khabarovsk–Vladivostok pipeline. Together, these pipelines will feed a planned LNG plant, which will produce liquefied natural gas for the export to Japan, and a planned petrochemical complex in Primorsky Krai, supplying no less than 30 billion cubic meters of gas a year.
While the creation of the gas transmission system in the Eastern gas program is scheduled to begin in 2012, in a future not far Yakutia may also give Moscow the opportunity to develop new oil fields able to substitute Russia’s traditional ones in Western Siberia which are nearing exhaustion. As a result, this cold and isolated land may become in the following years the heart of the Russian economy and one of the main alternative sources of energy supply to increasingly thirsty Asian markets.
LARGEST HYDROCARBON FIELDS IN EASTERN SIBERIA AND THE FAR EAST
