The head of Russia’s oil giant Rosneft, Igor Sechin, said on Tuesday the company’s Vostok Oil mega-project in the Arctic will boost the nation’s oil production and accelerate the country’s GDP growth, RBC reported.
Meeting with President Vladimir Putin, Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin said that Vostok Oil, the company’s project on northern Siberia’s Taimyr Peninsula, would see almost eight thousand kilometres (five thousand miles) of pipelines built and create 100,000 jobs. He said project will add five billion tons of oil to Russia’s production.
Sechin called Vostok Oil “the biggest (project) being undertaken in the global oil sector” and one that would impact world markets.
“All in all, completing this project will allow for an increase in the country’s annual GDP (gross domestic product) of two percent a year,” Sechin said.
Vostok Oil includes several major deposits with a total resource base of five billion tonnes of oil, Sechin said. Developing it would involve building two airports and 15 “industry towns”.
The project includes Rosneft’s Vankor and West Irkinskoye fields, along with the Payakhskoye field owned by the Neftegazholding company.
It is part of the government’s drive to develop new deposits in the Russian Arctic. The oil is to be shipped from a new port in Taimyr.
The strategic plan for Russia’s mineral resources stretches to 2035 and does not foresee a decrease in global demand though it does predict that demand for natural gas will partially replace that for oil and coal.