Putin’s key oil man Igor Sechin offers India crude supplies, prize block stakes
25 March 2014 12:16 AM GMT
As the US and Europe try to isolate Moscow over Crimea and Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trusted lieutenant Igor Sechin on Monday courted top Indian officials, offering to ship its vast crude oil reserves and stakes in oil and gas acreages. Sechin, who heads Russia’s biggest oil company Rosneft, led a delegation of about two-dozen officials to meet Oil Secretary Saurabh Chandra seeking to expand ties with New Delhi.
‘India is a very important country for Russia. We have a very efficiently run project with ONGC... now we want to expand our cooperation,’ Sechin said after the meeting. The Russian state oil major offered Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) a stake in nine offshore oil and gas blocks in the Barents Sea and one in the Black Sea.
‘We are (also) looking at supplying crude oil to Indian refineries,’ he said, adding that Rosneft produces 200 million tons of crude oil a year. Moscow is courting India to counter moves by the US and Europe to isolate it for trying to defend the Ukraine and Crimea from US expansionist moves. Sechin was in Tokyo last week to broaden ties with Japan.
India does not have a firm contract to import crude oil from Russia. It gets small volumes once in a while from ONGC’s Sakhalin-1 project in Far East Russia. Indian officials said logistics need to be worked out to import oil from Rosneft’s fields.
‘We may have to lay some pipelines to transport the crude. We have decided to form a working group to study how this can progress,’ an official said. Of the blocks offered in the Barents Sea, OVL found five were not lucrative. Of the remaining four, it would like to participate in two. It will decide on the other two once Rosneft makes available data by June.
Rosneft had previously offered ONGC a stake in the Magadan 2 and Magadan 3 exploration blocks in the northern part of the Sea of Okhotsk, which the Indian firm is studying. ‘We have a very efficient project with ONGC in Sakhalin-I. It is very well functioning. Now we are talking about expanding our cooperation,’ Sechin said.
ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of the state explorer, has a 20 per cent stake in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas field in the Russian Pacific Ocean. Rosneft has a similar stake in the project, which is operated by Exxon Mobil.
OVL had bought Imperial Energy, which has fields in Siberia, for USD 2.1 billion in January 2009. It is keen to get a foothold in the Arctic projects and expand in Siberia and Far East Russia. ‘At present, OVL is studying the preliminary data provided by Rosneft for identifying the preferred blocks for participation with Rosneft,’ an Indian official said.
Oil Minister M Veerapa Moily stated in December that Rosneft had offered OVL a stake in the Magadan 2 and Magadan 3 exploration blocks in the northern part of the Sea of Okhotsk in eastern Russia. The Sea of Okhotsk is bound by mainland Russia in the west and north, by the Kamchatka-Kuril peninsula towards the east and by north-east Hokkaido (Japan) to the south.
Rosneft had a couple of years back got a licence to explore five areas in the Sea of Okhotsk -- Magadan 1, 2 and 3, Lisyansky and Kashevarovsky. The area is estimated to hold 2.8 billion tons of oil and oil equivalent natural gas.
Sources said OVL had in May 2012 written to Rosneft expressing interest in taking a stake in oil and gas blocks in the Russia’s Arctic region, which have recently been given out to US major Exxon Mobil, Italian giant ENI and Norway’s Statoil for exploration.
The Russian firm had also recently roped in Statoil for four new joint ventures, including exploring the Magadan 1, Lisyansky and Kashevarovsky blocks that have recoverable reserves of 1.4 billion tonnes.
‘India is a very important country for Russia. We have a very efficiently run project with ONGC... now we want to expand our cooperation,’ Sechin said after the meeting. The Russian state oil major offered Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) a stake in nine offshore oil and gas blocks in the Barents Sea and one in the Black Sea.
‘We are (also) looking at supplying crude oil to Indian refineries,’ he said, adding that Rosneft produces 200 million tons of crude oil a year. Moscow is courting India to counter moves by the US and Europe to isolate it for trying to defend the Ukraine and Crimea from US expansionist moves. Sechin was in Tokyo last week to broaden ties with Japan.
India does not have a firm contract to import crude oil from Russia. It gets small volumes once in a while from ONGC’s Sakhalin-1 project in Far East Russia. Indian officials said logistics need to be worked out to import oil from Rosneft’s fields.
‘We may have to lay some pipelines to transport the crude. We have decided to form a working group to study how this can progress,’ an official said. Of the blocks offered in the Barents Sea, OVL found five were not lucrative. Of the remaining four, it would like to participate in two. It will decide on the other two once Rosneft makes available data by June.
Rosneft had previously offered ONGC a stake in the Magadan 2 and Magadan 3 exploration blocks in the northern part of the Sea of Okhotsk, which the Indian firm is studying. ‘We have a very efficient project with ONGC in Sakhalin-I. It is very well functioning. Now we are talking about expanding our cooperation,’ Sechin said.
ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of the state explorer, has a 20 per cent stake in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas field in the Russian Pacific Ocean. Rosneft has a similar stake in the project, which is operated by Exxon Mobil.
OVL had bought Imperial Energy, which has fields in Siberia, for USD 2.1 billion in January 2009. It is keen to get a foothold in the Arctic projects and expand in Siberia and Far East Russia. ‘At present, OVL is studying the preliminary data provided by Rosneft for identifying the preferred blocks for participation with Rosneft,’ an Indian official said.
Oil Minister M Veerapa Moily stated in December that Rosneft had offered OVL a stake in the Magadan 2 and Magadan 3 exploration blocks in the northern part of the Sea of Okhotsk in eastern Russia. The Sea of Okhotsk is bound by mainland Russia in the west and north, by the Kamchatka-Kuril peninsula towards the east and by north-east Hokkaido (Japan) to the south.
Rosneft had a couple of years back got a licence to explore five areas in the Sea of Okhotsk -- Magadan 1, 2 and 3, Lisyansky and Kashevarovsky. The area is estimated to hold 2.8 billion tons of oil and oil equivalent natural gas.
Sources said OVL had in May 2012 written to Rosneft expressing interest in taking a stake in oil and gas blocks in the Russia’s Arctic region, which have recently been given out to US major Exxon Mobil, Italian giant ENI and Norway’s Statoil for exploration.
The Russian firm had also recently roped in Statoil for four new joint ventures, including exploring the Magadan 1, Lisyansky and Kashevarovsky blocks that have recoverable reserves of 1.4 billion tonnes.
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