Oil and Gas Production at Sakhalin-1 Reached the Level Before the Start of the Special Operation
Oil and gas production at the Sakhalin-1 project, where work almost completely stopped almost a year ago due to force majeure declared by the American operator ExxonMobil, has returned to the level before the start of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, Governor of the Sakhalin Region Valery Limarenko said during the report on the activities of the regional government for 2022 before the regional Duma.
“Oil and gas production under the Sakhalin-1 project has reached the level before the start of a special military operation. We literally just learned about this. It is very important for us, it allows us to increase the budget,” Limarenko was quoted as saying by the official website of the government of the Sakhalin Region.
Limarenko also noted that the implementation of key projects continues in the region. Work on the development of the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye field as part of Sakhalin-3 is proceeding according to plan, the launch is expected in 2025. An oil and gas park is under construction, it should be opened in 2024, 12 residents have already been registered.
“We are inviting companies from China and India to projects in the energy complex. This is a good chance for them to fill the niche vacated by American and European companies in the oil and gas services market,” Limarenko added.
The former operator of Sakhalin-1, Exxon Neftegaz Limited (a subsidiary of Exxon Mobil), announced in March last year that it intended to withdraw from the project, and in April that a force majeure regime was introduced, as a result of which work was actually stopped. In early October 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to create a new — Russian — operator of the Sakhalin-1 project, which would transfer the rights and obligations of Exxon Neftegaz Limited.
The new operator is managed by the Rosneft structure Sakhalinmorneftegaz-Shelf. In February of this year, Rosneft confirmed the resumption of production. At the end of May, the head of the Russian company, Igor Sechin, said that in the first quarter, daily production at Sakhalin-1 increased by 1.8 times, although the downtime had a negative impact on the technical conditions for field development.
