MOSCOW, June 23. /ITAR-TASS/. The construction of the world’s largest permanent type drilling oil platform Berkut has been finished on the Arkutun-Dagi field on Russia’s Sakhalin shelf, ExxonMobil, the operator of the Sakhalin-1 project, said on Monday.

Berkut will be launched in December and produce up to 12,000 tonnes of oil daily. The platform is designed to operate in temperatures no lower than -44 degrees Celsius, with the wave height up to 18 meters and ice coverage up to two meters.

Sakhalin-1 is the oil and gas project which envisages the development of three fields - Chayvo, Odoptu and Arkutun-Dagi with the extractable reserves amounting to 2.3 billion barrels of oil and 485 billion cubic meters of natural gas. The project’s consortium has already invested $4.5 billion in the development of the project.

ExxonMobil is the Sakhlin-1 operator with a 30% stake. SODECO also owns 30% in the project, while Russian oil major Rosneft and ONGC hold 20% stakes each. The companies develop the Sakhalin-1 fields under a production sharing agreement.