SOCHI, August 9 (RIA Novosti) — Russia's President Vladimir Putin launched a joint project of Russia's Rosneft and US ExxonMobil at the Arctic West Alpha rig on Saturday.
The companies will drill in the northernmost well called Universitetskaya-1 in the Kara Sea.
Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin and the Chief of ExxonMobil Russia Glenn Waller attended the opening ceremony. Sechin said the companies had to fulfil a complex of tasks of exploration drilling to ensure the West Siberian gas reserves continued in the Sea.
"As a result of this work, we are hoping to open a new Kara Sea oil province, which according to experts' estimates, would overcome such oil and gas provinces as the Gulf of Mexico, the Brazilian, Alaskan and Canadian Shelves by the resource volume and would match the resource base of Saudi Arabia," Sechin said.
Sechin also said Rosneft was also preparing for the scheduled drilling in the Black Sea, Sea of Azov, Pechora and Barents Seas.
Putin said the project would benefit Russia’s and US economies, as well as the global energy market.
The project kicked off less than two months after Russia’s oil giant Rosneft and Texas-based ExxonMobil Corporation launched the Berkut oil and gas rig in the Sea of Okhotsk at the end of June.
The project with ExxonMobil and Russia’s Arctic shelf exploration as a whole came under threat after the United States, along with the European Union and several other countries, imposed sanctions on Russia’s energy, financial and defense sectors last week over Russia’s alleged involvement in the Ukrainian crisis.
The European Union banned its producers from exporting to Russia technologies and equipment linked to deep water and Arctic oil exploration and production, as well as to shale-oil projects. The United States also introduced sanctions banning future contracts on supplying Russia with technologies and equipment used for hydrocarbon development.
Rosneft has proposed to the country’s government to amend its corporate purchases law or scrap import duties on drilling equipment in the wake of the recent Western sanctions.
Moscow stressed that Russia was never involved in the Ukrainian conflict and retaliated with a blanket ban on food imports from the European Union, the United States, Australia, Canada, and Norway.
