The Gazprom Neft Board of Directors reviews preliminary results for 2018 and plans for 2019

The Gazprom Neft Board of Directors has reviewed the preliminary outcomes of the company’s 2018 investment programme and budget, and plans for 2019.

Hydrocarbon production at Gazprom Neft is expected to reach 92.8 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe) in 2018, a 3.4-percent increase on 2017. Annual refining volumes are provisionally expected to increase to 42.5 million tonnes. Sales of premium oil products are expected to be in the order of 26.7 million tonnes, a potential two-percent increase on last year.

The development of major new projects in the Arctic — the Novoportovskoye, Vostochno-Messoyakhskoye and Prirazlomnoye fields — delivered the greatest contribution to production growth. The construction of the Alexander Sannikov icebreaker, mainly responsible for supporting tankers transporting oil from the Novoportovskoye field via the Northern Sea Route, was completed in 2018 as part of the company’s development of an effective logistics strategy in the Arctic.

Gazprom Neft’s most important discoveries in 2018 were made in the Sea of Okhotsk, offshore from Sakhalin Island, with the company making its second discovery here at the Ayashsky block. Reserves in place here, at what has been named the Triton field, are estimated at more than 137 mtoe. Estimated reserves at the company’s first discovery in the same area — the Neptune field — were increased to 415 million tonnes in 2018.

A subsidiary, the Bazhenov Technology Centre, was established in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, part of the company’s programme to bring non-traditional and hard-to-recover reserves into production. This subsidiary’s main task is to develop a range of commercially viable Russian technologies for developing the Bazhen Formation. A further technological testing ground, for developing strategies for bringing Achimovsky reserves into production, is expected to be established in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.