Gazprom Neft asks for auctions for Yamal fields: press
Russia's Gazprom Neft has requested that auctions be held on special terms for three oil and gas fields on the Yamal Peninsula in the Russian Arctic, the Moscow-based Kommersant newspaper reported on December 9.
Company CEO Alexander Dyukov made the request to Russian president Vladimir Putin, according to the newspaper. The fields in question – Nurminskoye, Rostovtsevskoye and Sredneyamalskoye – currently form part of Russia's strategic reserve, designed to retain some oil and gas resources for development in the future.
Gazprom Neft needs the fields to boost capacity utilisation along a pipeline the company has recently built to pump associated gas from the Novoportovskoye oilfield on Yamal to Russia's national gas transport system, Dyukov argued. Completed in October, the pipeline's capacity is 20bn m3/year, but it is due to handle only around 7.3bn m3/yr of gas initially.
According to Dyukov, the three fields could be commissioned before the end of the decade, guaranteeing the pipeline's long-term utilisation.
Gazprom Neft has traditionally focused primarily on oil development, but has shifted its attention to natural gas in recent years, encouraged by the demand outlook for the fuel. It has significant untapped gas reserves at many of its largest oilfields, and gas development has worked as an avenue of growth for the company at a time when its oil production is restricted under OPEC+ quotas.
The company started full-scale development of Novoportovskoye's oil reserves in 2016, using the 170,000 barrel/day Arctic Gas sea terminal to ship its supplies to international markets. But until the pipeline's completion, it had no means of monetising the field's associated gas reserves.