Rosneft: Chief Executive Sergei Bogdanchikov
Rosneft puts offshore costs at $2.6tn
Russia needs 61 trillion rubles ($2.6 trillion) of investment to develop offshore oil and gas deposits, Rosneft boss Sergei Bogdanchikov has claimed.
Exploration alone of offshore regions until 2050 will cost 16 trillion rubles and production 45 trillion rubles more, Bogdanchikov told reporters and government officials in Moscow today.
Russia's sector of the Arctic Ocean may hold 100 billion barrels of oil and natural gas, enough to meet US fuel demand for almost nine years, state-run Rosneft's smaller competitor Lukoil said last week.
Western Siberian oilfields, where Russia pumps most of its crude, have depleted after more than 30 years of extraction, forcing oil companies to seek growth in increasingly remote regions.
Offshore projects could produce 80 million to 90 million metric tons of oil or between 1.6 million barrels a day to 1.8 million barrels a day, Bogdanchikov said, citing company estimates.
Offshore hydrocarbon production may be evenly split between crude oil and natural gas, Bloomberg quoted him as saying.