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Gazprom Neft starts drilling first well in Novoportovsky fields in Yamal

The first phase of pilot testing was completed in the Novoportovsky field at the beginning of 2011

TYUMEN, June 7 (Itar-Tass) — Gazprom Neft oil company, a subsidiary of Russia’s natural gas giant OAO Gazprom, has started drilling the first development well in the Novoportovsky oil and gas condensate field in center of the Yamal Peninsula.

The design depth of the controlled directional well will total 2,200 meters and all the drilling and construction works will be completed before the end of this summer.

A team of geologists working for the geological survey enterprise Glavtyumengeologiya discovered the Novoportovsky field in 1964. It is located 360 kilometers to the northwest of the city of Salekhard, the administrative center of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, 30 kilometers away from the coast of the Kara Sea’s Obskaya Guba gulf.

Its recoverable reserves stand at over 230 million tons of crude oil and more than 270 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

The first phase of pilot testing was completed in the Novoportovsky field at the beginning of 2011. The company reactivated and trial-tested four wells, at which it obtained a natural flow of oil in the amount exceeding 140 cubic meters a day.

The potential output of the wells is estimated at 300 cubic meters a day. All in all, the company drilled 146 exploration wells in the Novoportovsky field at the stage of exploration works.

It plans to take another two wells out of long-term storage and to drill four horizontal wells, including a multitube one, in that field before the end of the year.

Gazpromneft said in a report on the issue the de-mothballing of old wells and the drilling of new ones will make it possible to get a better understanding of the opportunities for the extraction of crude from the oil-bearing strata of the Novoportovsky field, as well as to identify the optimal possible constructions of the wells.

According to the Gazpromneft plans, full-scale commercial production of oil and gas condensate at the deposits will begin in 2013 or 2014 and the volumes of output will reach 400,000 to 500,000 tons a year.

Gazpromneft is considering a possibility of transportation of hydrocarbons from the Novoportovsky field along the Northern Sea Route. In April 2011, it organizes a pilot cruise of The Vaigach nuclear-powered icebreaker from the port of Sabetta to Cape Kamenny, located 400 km to the south.

The cape is the point where the pumping of crude to the tankers is expected to take place.

Composition of oil at the Novoportovsky field is characterized by a small enough content of sulfur. This enables the experts to surmise that its maritime transportation will be more commercially advantageous than transportation by the land surface, which will require impressive capital investment.

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