MOSCOW, August 01. /ITAR-TASS/. The EU sanctions on oil equipment are not critical, an official of Russia’s major oil company Rosneft told Itar-Tass on Friday.

“The company continues to assess the possible influence of the EU sanctions on equipment supplies to Russian oil sector,” the company’s representative told ITAR-TASS. “But many items on the list are, obviously, not critical, there are suppliers of this machinery in Russia and countries outside the Eurozone.”

The company had clear understanding of how to find suppliers of the necessary equipment, though purchase reorientation would take some time, the representative added.

The EU sectoral sanctions that came into effect on August 1 have not stopped machinery and technology supplies to the Russian oil sector but introduce a regime of preliminary approval of such deals to be issued in the countries of exporters’ registration.

The list includes 30 items of machinery for offshore projects, deepwater drilling and exploration in the Arctic as well as shale oil projects in Russia.

The Russian continental shelf can now be developed only by companies with a state stake higher than 50% and no less than 5-year offshore experience. These are now monopoly gas exporter Gazprom and Rosneft. The latter also explores oil and gas on the Black Sea and produces gas off Sakhalin peninsula’s shore under production sharing agreement in the project Sakhalin-2. In 2014, Gazprom subsidiary Gazprom Neft started oil production in the Pechora Sea.