Gazprom Neft Focuses on Arctic Projects, Plans New Yamal Gas Plant

The oil arm of Russian energy giant Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, plans to raise oil production at its Arctic projects this year and is considering the launch of a new gas processing plant in Yamal, Rupec.ru reports.

The company said on Tuesday its oil production at the Novy Port project will rise to 8 million tons (160,000 barrels per day) in 2020 from 7.7 million tons in 2019.

It also plans to build another three wells at the Prirazlomnoye field – Russia’s only offshore oil producing project in the Arctic – in addition to 19 existing wells there.

The share of oil extracted in the Arctic has risen to more than 30% of its total oil production, Gazprom Neft said.

The company added it may consider expanding the gas infrastructure of the Novoportovskoye field with the prospect of launching a gas processing plant.

“The expansion of the complex gas treatment facility to a full-fledged gas processing plant with a capacity of 15 billion cubic meters of gas per year will help maintain a 95% useful gas utilization rate of associated petroleum gas,” it said, without specifying possible project implementation dates.

According to Gazprom Neft, oil production at the Vostochno-Messoyakhskoye field, which the company is developing together with Rosneft, increased by more than 22% – to 5.6 million tons of oil equivalent. The systematic increase in operating results was ensured by the use of advanced engineering and geological and technical solutions in the development of hard-to-recover viscous oil reserves, the company added.