Rosneft estimates that crude production from its East Siberian and Russian Far Eastern projects will amount to 55 million mt/year, or 1.1 million b/d, by 2025, a spokesman at Rosneft said Friday.
To achieve this, the company plans to invest around Rb3 trillion ($83.6 billion) in upstream projects in those regions from now till 2025, the spokesman said, confirming comments made earlier Friday by Rosneft Vice President Svyatoslav Slavinsky at a conference in the East Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.
Rosneft's projects in East Siberia, including the major Vankor cluster of fields, are seen as a key resource base for the planned increase in crude production, with a significant portion likely targeted at China.
Late last year, Rosneft revised its production plans for the Vankor cluster -- which comprises the Vankor, Suzun, Tagul and Lodochnoye fields -- and said it expected output from the group of fields to peak at 25 million mt/year (500,000 b/d) by 2019, six years later than initially planned.
Rosneft said then that the new development plan for the cluster would allow it to extend the period of peak production significantly and cut costs, by using transport infrastructure more effectively among other things.
The company also said last year that the Vankor field, a major source of crude that is exported eastward via the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, failed to meet expectations. Rosneft initially expected crude production at the Vankor field, which began in 2009, to peak at 25 million mt/year in 2013, but in February last year, the company said that Vankor output would rise to only about 21.5 million mt in 2013.
Rosneft now expects crude production at Vankor to grow slightly to 22 million mt in 2014 and further to 23 million mt in 2016, according to media reports in late 2013 that cited the Krasnoyarsk region's draft budget for 2014-2016.
Apart from the Vankor cluster, Rosneft owns several other greenfield projects in East Siberia, including the Verkhnechonsk field which is already producing. Rosneft in mid-2013 said crude production from Verkhnechonsk was expected at 7.8 million mt/year in 2014.
The company is also expected to launch other greenfield projects in the region after 2016, when new pipeline infrastructure is built to link those fields to the ESPO pipeline.
