Baltic Sea Drilling Begins

Russia's largest oil company, Lukoil, started drilling at a $270 million offshore field in the Baltic Sea.

Drilling began at the Kravtsovskoye field, also known as D-6, which contains 66.7 million barrels of oil in recoverable reserves, LUKOIL said in a statement. The field lies 22 kilometers off the coast of Kaliningrad.

The company plans to start production at the field this summer and to bring output to 600,000 tons per year (12,000 barrels per day) by 2007.