Lukoil President Vagit Alekperov has informed Rosneft and its leader Eduard Khudaynatov about his interest in discussing joint action in the Barents Sea, a spokeman for the company confirms to RIA Novosti. Company representative Gleb Ovsyannikov says Lukoil is “ready to as soon as possible assess a concrete list of projects for joint action, technical and economic parameters and the documents needed for implementation”, Oilru.com reports.
The request from Lukoil comes after Rosneft President Khudaynatov earlier this month invited several Russian, as well as foreign, companies to jointly develop fields in the highly promising waters in the Barents Sea. Among the fields included in the invitation are the Fedynskoye, Perseevskoye, Tsentralo-Barentsevskoye fields and the Admiralteyskaya and the Pakhtusovskaya structures, newspaper Kommersant reports.
Read also: Rosneft invites competitors to Russian-Norwegian waters
As previously reported, Rosneft issued the invitation on the request of Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin.
It is not known which foreign companies were approached by the state company. However, as previously reported, Statoil has been among the companies which earlier have been mentioned by Rosneft.
The conditions required by Rosneft might however be more than what Lukoil and the other companies will be willing to accept. Rosneft is offering up to 33.3 percent stakes in the projects and in return demands that the project partners not only take on all expenses related with exploration, but also pay $0,25 per barrel of the oil extracted. In addition, the partners will not get operational control, nor be allowed to independently sell the produced oil, Kommersant reports.
This is more than whan is acceptable for any potential partner, the newspaper concludes.
