20 May 2004 06:22
Rosneft, Marathon Oil continue joint venture talks
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK. May 20 (Interfax) - Russian oil company Rosneft and the U.S. company Marathon Oil are continuing
talks to set up a joint venture, Rosneft President Sergei Bogdanchikov said at a Thursday press conference in
Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.
"Marathon Oil is our partner of long standing, with which we have worked since the start of the 1990s on
Sakhalin oil projects. Given that this company has acquired Khanty-Mansiisk Oil Corporation and we have the company
Severnaya Neft, there is a proposal to merge these assets into a single company and to organize supplies of oil to the
U.S. market for refining at Marathon Oil refineries. Work is being carried out. But we should enter this project with a
full understanding of what we are bringing to it, and we do not yet have this understanding," he said.
field, and also the effectiveness of a system set up by us to export
100% of oil from that field. This system includes a terminal in
He said that Severnaya Neft has not yet fully explored the Val Gamburtsev field in Nenets autonomous district.
"We are completing this exploration. Last year three-dimensional seismic exploration was carried out at the outer
sections of the field and seven wells were drilled. The field was found to have a high level of non-uniformity. We need
to process the results of this three-dimensional research and build a hydrodynamic model for this field again," he
said.
The Rosneft chief said that the company has received permission from the Russian Natural Resource Ministry to deepen
the field, which will add at least another 10 million tonnes to the field's recoverable oil reserves.
"We should fully complete an evaluation of Severnaya Neft reserves, its production capacity and the value of the
Val Gamburtsev
Arkhangelsk, a terminal in the form of a collector tanker in Kola Bay, and the last element of the system - a rail
terminal in Arkhangelsk region, to be launched on June 16. Then we will look at the economics and we will be able to say
to Marathon Oil how much more it should pay. It will have to pay more, this is obvious. If Marathon agrees to these
conditions, then a contract will be signed," Bogdanchikov said.
In 2002 Marathon and Rosneft signed a letter of intent to jointly participate in a company to supply Russian oil to
the U.S. [RU EUROPE ASIA EEU EMRG ENR CRU OIL TRD US MRG] rd <>
[Interfax] |
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