Salym Petroleum Development began drilling in December and is planned to be production tested sometime in March, Sergey Vakulenko, head of strategy for Gazprom Neft, said at the IHS CeraWeek conference in Houston.

The well is the first of five wildcats planned for the Upper Salym field, where the pair believes there may be as much as 600 million barrels or more of potential reserves.

Geologically,