02 June 2004 02:10 Lukoil has Caspian reserves of 4.5 bln tonnes LONDON. June 2 (Interfax) - Recoverable reserves in the Russian sector of the Caspian Sea belonging to Russian oil
major Lukoil have been calculated at 4.5 billion tonnes of oil equivalent, following geological work.
The company said in a statement that this figure was announced at the 11th International Caspian Oil and Gas
Exhibition and Conference in Baku on Wednesday.
Hydrocarbon production in this region will commence in 2008 and in the course of the next 15-20 years will amount to
approximately 10 billion cubic meters of gas and 4 million tonnes of oil annually, the company said in a press
release.
Ten structures and almost twenty relatively large non-anticline deposits are prepared for development in the region.
The majority of the prospected sites are located at the sea-depth of up to 50 meters, though the largest of the
structures, namely Central and Yalama-Samur, are 300-500 meters deep underwater, the press release said.
Exploratory drilling has been performed at five structures: Khvalynskaya, '170-km', Shirotnaya, Sarmatskaya
and Rakushechnaya. As of today, eight wells have been drilled and five large multilayer oil/gas, gas and gas condensate
fields have been discovered, the statement said.
A commercial flow of hydrocarbons has been reported at all of the fields. The largest gas yield (over one million
cubic meters of gas daily) was obtained at Khvalynskoye and Sarmatskoye fields. The largest oil yield of 377 cubic
meters daily came from the '170-km' field and the Yury Korchagin field.
The Central and Yalama-Samur structures are prepared for deep drilling. The drilling of the first well at
Yalama-Samur structure within D- 222 Block belonging to the Azerbaijani part of the shelf is planned for 2004.
The statement said that according to the latest estimates, the aggregate recoverable hydrocarbon reserves at the
"Northern" license block total 812 million tonnes of oil equivalent, including 100.3 million tonnes of oil,
677 billion cubic meters of gas and 34 million tonnes of condensate. Recoverable reserves at Central and Yalama-Samur
fields are estimated at 1.1 billion tonnes of oil equivalent.
Further intensive geological prospecting will raise annual production of feedstock in the region up to 50 million
tonnes of oil equivalent by 2016-2018. Hence, the development of the Caspian fields will help Russia to make up for the
production decline in the regions where it traditionally produces hydrocarbons, i.e. the Urals, the Volga region and
Western Siberia, the press release said. [RU ASIA EUROPE EEU EMRG CORA ENR CRU OIL] rd RTS$#&:
[Interfax] |