Gazprom Neft lands a dozen Arctic blocks

Russia’s third-largest oil and gas producer Gazprom Neft has secured exploration rights to 12 blocks spanning more than 5,000 km of the Taymyr Peninsula in the Russian Arctic.

Gazprom Neft’s licences for the acreage are valid for seven years and were issued without a tender, the state firm reported on August 21. Their potential resources have not been assessed, it said. The company intends to integrate existing geophysical and geological data on the area in 2020-2021, in order to draw up exploration plans.

Taymyr is east of the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas, which are poised to drive oil and gas production growth in Russia over the next decade. Remote and scarcely explored, it contains the Yeniseisko-Anabarskaya petroleum basin, sandwiched between the larger and more prolific Western and Eastern Siberian basins.

Several oil and gas deposits have been identified in the far western section of Yeniseisko-Anabarskaya, including the Baikalovskoye field, where state-owned Rosneft is undertaking appraisal work with the UK major BP. Rosneft reported an oil discovery in 2017 off the eastern shore of Taymyr, in the Laptev Sea. Private operator Lukoil also drilled a well on the peninsula that year, but came up dry.