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Rosneft in Asia for Arctic shelf talks

Rosneft is looking for new partners in Asia.

The head of Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft Igor Sechin is in Asia to discuss Arctic offshore projects with China, Japan and South Korea.

Location

Sechin is travelling to Japan on Tuesday to discuss partnerships on offshore projects with large Japanese oil companies. Japan is already the largest buyer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world. The Fukhusima nuclear disaster in March 2011 made another push away from electricity made by reactors.

The trip to Japan comes after Sechin spent two days in China for talks, including discussions on potential offshore projects with Chinese companies CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC, Russia Today reports.

In February Rosneft obtained licenses to develop 12 sections of the continental shelf, seven of which have predicted reserves of 10 billion tons of oil and 7 trillion cubic meters of gas. These seven sectors have already been offered to the American ExxonMobil that got the third part of each project. Also the Russian company has cooperation agreements with Italy’s Eni and Norway’s Statoil for shelf development.

Rosneft did not say which sites were put forward in the negotiations with the Chinese or what their share will be. Igor Sechin also offered China the opportunity to collaborate in the export of liquid natural gas, LNG. Currently the only company that can export Russian gas is Gazprom, but the Ministry of Energy is considering the possibility of ending its monopoly so the country can expand into new markets.