In early 2009,
Disagreement over Export Plans
Sakhalin is a long north-south island in
The Sakhalin-1 development comprises three deposits. The first is under production, the second is under development, and the third is under exploration.
Oil from the Chaivo deposit started to run through a pipeline to the De-Kastri terminal in
Drilling at the Oduptu oil and gas field began in May 2009, and commercial production began in September 2010. The product goes to the Chaivo processing facility and then to the De-Kastri for export.
The Arkutun-Dagi field is yet to be developed, but first oil is expected in 2014; it will also go to De-Kastri via Chaivo.
ExxonMobil and Gazprom disagree over export plans. Partners in Sakhalin-1 are an ExxonMobil subsidiary (30%, consortium operator), the Indian state company ONGC (30%), two affiliates of Rosneft (total 20%), and the SODECO consortium of Japanese firms (20%). ExxonMobil's subsidiary Exxon Neftegaz is negotiating with China National Petroleum Corporation to export the gas directly to
Increased Political Pressure
Political pressure on ExxonMobil's Russian subsidiary Exxon Neftegaz in its dispute with Gazprom has recently increased. ExxonMobil signed a Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) for Sakhalin in 1996, and it is only one of three contracts in all of
BP is still being slowly and painfully squeezed out the BP-TNK joint venture, and this follows by less than a decade the state expropriation of Yukos from its chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is now facing sentencing on new charges brought just as he is finishing his original jail sentence. The new threats against ExxonMobil do not bode well for foreign investors in
At Sakhalin-3, recoverable reserves of hydrocarbons are confirmed at the Veninskii block (owned by Rosneft) while the Kirinskoe block (owned by Gazprom) has commercial amounts of gas estimated at almost 25 billion cubic meters, a quarter of totally estimated reserves and probably a few hundred million barrels of associated condensate. These are among the resources upon which Gazprom is counting to satisfy demand in the Russian Far East via the projected Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok and also to convert at the coast to LNG for export. This has become more crucial as development may also be delayed of the Chayanda field in Yakutia, from where product is planned to feed the still-to-be-constructed Yakutia-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok pipeline, the economic and also ecological viability of which is now under question.
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