Moscow, March 27 - Neftegaz.RU. Gazprom Neft’s Arctic assets were responsible for a significant contribution to the company’s total production growth in 2019, with about 30% of all oil production occurring within the Arctic Circle. Liquid hydrocarbon production was up 8% at the Novoportovskoye field, reaching 7.7 million tonnes - the result of new digital and industrial technologies, together with the commissioning of new wells.
2020 is expected to see production volumes reach 8 million tonnes of oil per year at the Novy Port project — the driver behind this growth being the development of the northern part of the field, the potential of which has already been confirmed through pilot works.
A further area for development at the Novoportovskoye field concerns the development of major gas infrastructure. Expanding current gas treatment facilities to establish a full-scale 15-bcm per-year gas processing plant will allow associated petroleum gas (APG) utilisation to be maintained at 95%. Gas utilisation at the field increased by more than 31% in 2019, reaching 8.59 bcm.
Oil production at the Vostochno-Messoyakhskoye field, being developed by Gazprom Neft in conjunction with Rosneft, was up more than 22%, reaching 5.6 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe) - this planned improvement in performance being the result of cutting-edge engineering, geological and technological solutions used in developing hard-to-recover viscous oil reserves.
Full-scale development of Achimovsky deposits (reserves at which are estimated at more than 111 million tonnes in total, including 35,000 million tonnes of oil) commenced in 2019 - deep drilling at these formations demonstrating flow rates five to eight times higher than the average at this asset.
One of the most promising tasks in developing this asset in 2020 will be bringing low-capacity strata and Vostochno-Messoyakhskoye-field edge-zone reserves under development. In addition to this, a 1.5-billion bcm-pa compressor station, a 47-km gas pipeline, and an underground APG storage facility at the Zapadno-Messoyakhskoye field are due to be commissioned in 2020 as part of developing gas infrastructure on this project.
Production volumes at the Prirazlomnoye field remained stable throughout 2019, at 3.14 tonnes of oil. More than 12 million tonnes of ARCO (Arctic) oil have now been produced over the 6 years in which the Prirazlomnoye platform has been in continuous operation in the Barents Sea, and 19 wells drilled. Three further wells will be built and commissioned at Russia’s 1st ever project on the Russian Arctic Shelf in 2020.
“Arctic oil already accounts for more than 30% of Gazprom Neft’s total portfolio. Hydrocarbon production under the harsh conditions of the Arctic is fraught with multiple technological and managerial difficulties, but the company’s active development of Arctic fields, and its development of major new production clusters, says much about how we are successfully coping with this challenge, guaranteeing continued improvements in the company’s operational and financial performance, and accumulating invaluable experience in implementing major - and, for the most part, unique - projects”, said Vadim Yakovlev, Deputy CEO for Exploration and Production, Gazprom Neft.
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Gazprom Neft expands production in the Arctic