NPD Report on High North Offshore
Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD), Norwegian government agency responsible for the regulation of the petroleum resources on the Norwegian continental shelf, has presented a report on petroleum activity in the High North at the Barents Sea conference.The report titled "Petroleum activity in the High North" aims to place petroleum activity in the High North into a technological, historical and international context, showing how exploration and…
Arctic: ExxonMobil Exits, Rosneft Goes Ahead
Russian state oil company Rosneft will continue geological explorations in the Arctic offshore zone after ExxonMobil quits the joint projects, reports TASS. The report qouted Natural Resources Minister Sergey Donskoy saying that the Arctic licenses will remain with Rosneft and the company "plans to continue to operate there". Exxon Mobil decided to withdraw from the joint projects with Rosneft in late 2017 after Washington issued a legal act expanding against Russia.
Threat from wandering greenhouse gas
On the seafloor of the shallow coastal regions north of Siberia, microorganisms produce methane when they break down plant remains. If this greenhouse gas finds its way into the water, it can also become trapped in the sea ice that forms in these coastal waters. As a result, the gas can be transported thousands of kilometres across the Arctic Ocean and released in a completely different region months later. This phenomenon is the subject of an article by researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute…
Rosneft Restores Meteorological Observations System in Kara Sea
As part of a large-scale summer Arctic research expedition "Kara-Summer - 2014" a meteorological station was installed that meets the latest modern requirements for such equipment, on the island of Uedinenie. Thus, the expedition organized by the "Arctic Research and Development Center" (a joint venture of "Rosneft" and ExxonMobil), with the support of the specialists from the FGBI "Arctic and Antarctic Scientific Research Institute" has completed the restoration of the system of meteorological observations in the Kara Sea…
Gazprom & Rosneft Receive New Sites in the Arctic
The government supplemented the list of the subsoil sites of federal importance that are available for use without auctions. The Prime Minister of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, signed the respective decree.The list includes the Pritaymyrsky subsurface site in the Laptev Sea, as well as the Kheysovsky site in the Barents Sea. The area of the Pritaymyrsky plot is 20,619,000 sq. km. The extractable reserves are estimated to be 104.6 million tonnes. Gas reserves total 362.8 billion cubic meters. The Kheysovsky site covers an area of 83,590,000 sq. km.
Kara-Winter-2014 Ice Expedition Successfully Completed
The Kara-Winter-2014 Ice Expedition organized by the Arctic Research and Design Center (a joint venture of Rosneft and ExxonMobil) with expert support from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute Federal State Budget Institution was successfully finished. It has become the largest expedition in the Arctic Ocean since the USSR collapse. Within 63 days scientists have been studying least developed areas of three northern seas: the Laptev, Kara, and East-Siberian Seas on board the Yamal Ice-Breaker.
Oil Majors Expand Far North Exploration Projects
Rosneft and ExxonMobil agree to collaborate in the search for offshore energy in the Russian Arctic & Far East, and Alaska. The two companies have agreed to expand their cooperation under their 2011 Strategic Cooperation Agreement to include an additional approximately 600,000 square kilometers (150 million acres) of exploration acreage in the Russian Arctic and potential participation by Rosneft (or its affiliate) in the Point Thomson project in Alaska. They have also agreed to conduct a joint study on a potential LNG project in the Russian Far East.
