Russia Key Projects and Business Highlights
In acquiring TNK from BP, Rosneft became this first half 2013 the world largest oil & gas and petrochemical company, ahead of ExxonMobil or China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC or PetroChina) in term of revenues, thus sending the signal that Russia intends to stay clearly in the lead of the oil and gas market.
With only the ninth largest crude oil reserves, Russia manages to challenge Saudi Arabia as world largest crude oil producer with an average of 10 million barrels per day (b/d).
Regarding the natural gas Russia cumulates the largest reserves, ahead of Iran and Qatar, and the largest production with more than 60 billion cubic feet per day (cf/d).
Behind these gigantic figures, Russia faces the challenges of the maturing fields and to see its production declining unless new fields should developed.
Unfortunately most of the untapped reserves are located in deep offshore and hard to reach regions such as Russia Arctic Ocean, Northern Caspian Sea and Eastern Siberia.
In all cases, either to boost production from the existing fields or to develop the new fields, the Russian Government realized that the local companies, Bashneft, Gazprom, Lukoil, Novatek, Penzaneft, PSA Rosneft, Russneft, Slavneft, Surgutneftegaz or Tatneft, would need the support of the foreign companies to provide the convenient technologies.
Therefore the Russia Government encouraged the foreign companies to sign strategic alliances with Russian partners and reviewed the tax scheme in that respect.
As a result, the international companies BP, ExxonMobil, Shell, Eni, Statoil, Total and more recently the field service company Halliburton signed joint venture and technological partnership with the Russian companies Gazprom, Rosneft, Novatek in the perspective to design and build $multi-billion projects as per below.
Gazprom accelerates its export LNG terminal projects
After the expansion of the Sakhalin-2 LNG project and the future Vladivostok LNG project on the east coast, the Russian gas leader Gazprom is looking west and investigating solutions to substitute the challenging Shtokman project in reviving the old Baltic LNG project on the Gulf of Finland.
Rosneft and ExxonMobil to team up on Sakhalin LNG
During a visit in April on the Sakhalin-1 facilities, Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Victor Sechin announced his intention to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia in joint venture with his partner ExxonMobil in Sakhalin-1 on the far east of Russia.
Mr Sechin indicated that this Russia LNG project could be located on Pacific Coast of the Russia main land in the region of Khaborovsk or on the Sakhalin Island directly, as close as possible from Sakhalin-1 offshore gas production facilities.
Rosneft and Mitsui signed MOU for Nakhodka complex
During the visit of Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe to Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 29th, 2013, the Russian oil and gas and petrochemical giant OJSC NK ROSNEFT (Rosneft) and the Japanese conglomerate Mitsui & Co., Ltd (Mitsui) inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to develop jointly the FEPCO petrochemical complex at Dakhodka in the Russia far east.
RiCoal selected Rostov for its Petrochemical complex
The Russian joint venture RiCoal Chemical Coal Plant (RiCoal) is planning to build a world-scale Coal-to-Olefin and petrochemical complex in Rostov-on-Don in the south of Russia.
Estimated to require $2.5 billion capital expenditure, RiCoal selected Rostov-on-Don location because of available coal and natural gas available in the region and the easy access to export markets for the petrochemical production.
Technip and JGC win Yamal LNG EPC contract
The Russian Novatek and the international oil company (IOC) Total from France have selected, through their joint venture JSC Yamal LNG, the consortium made of Technip from France and JGC from Japan to build the liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant of their Yamal project.
Located onshore, in the Arctic area of the Yamal Peninsula in Russia, the Yamal LNG project is to develop the wet gas resources of the Yamal -Nenets region.
