TNK-BP wins tender to buy major unexploited Soviet-era oilfield

PanARMENIAN.Net - Russian-British oil joint venture TNK-BP has won a tender to buy one of Russia’s last three major unexploited Soviet-era oilfields in a deal likely to benefit oil giant Rosneft, in auction results announced by the Federal Subsoil Agency on Tuesday, Dec 11.

According to RIA Novosti, the auction was won by TNK-BP’s subsidiary, Samotlorneftegaz, which offered the highest price for the Lodochnoye oil deposit located in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in East Siberia. The field has recoverable oil reserves of about 43 million metric tons (315 million barrels) and recoverable gas reserves of around 70 billion cubic meters.

“The largest...payment, offered by Samotlorneftegaz, amounts to 4.660 billion rubles [$150.8 million],” the Federal Subsoil Agency said.

The auction’s starting price was set at 3.6 billion rubles ($116 million). The other bidders included private oil firm Surgutneftegaz, oil major Rosneft and Status LLC, a subsidiary of Gazprombank affiliated with energy giant Gazprom.

The Lodochnoye field is close to the Suzun and Tagul oil deposits operated by TNK-BP and the Vankor oil and gas field, the biggest field discovered in Russia in the last 25 years, which belongs to Rosneft. Oil from Vankor is exported via the East Siberia–Pacific Ocean Pipeline (ESPO) to China.

Lodochnoye is one of the last three major oilfields discovered in the Soviet period, along with the Imilor and Shpilman deposits, which the subsoil watchdog wants to auction off by the end of this year.

The Federal Subsoil Agency has scheduled an auction for the Severo-Rogozhnikovskoye deposit for December 18, with a starting price of 14 billion rubles ($453 million), and for Imilor for December 25, with a starting price of 25.4 billion rubles ($822 million).

Rosneft, which recently announced an all-out purchase of TNK-BP and has already secured the Russian government’s approval to buy 100 percent of Russia’s third-largest crude producer from British oil major BP and the AAR consortium of Russian billionaire shareholders, will be the main beneficiary of the Lodochnoye auction, experts said.