Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the new Korchagin ice-resistant stationary oil platform in the Caspian was made intelligently and was a real piece of high technology, Itar-Tass reported.
"This is a high-tech project in the full meaning of this word. Not a single centimetre on the platform has been wasted. It is all packed with world class high-tech equipment," Putin said as he visited the platform on Wednesday.
"The modern energy sector ahs become a high-tech sector, and I was proud to see both the equipment and the people," he said.
"The successful implementation of this project indicates serious qualitative changes in the Russian oil and gas sector. New advanced technologies and production models are making their way to the sector," Putin said, adding that modern energy technologies were overlapping with other high technologies, such as space ones. "Many facilities across the country are controlled online from one centre," he said.
Putin stressed that Russian oil companies were gaining experience of comprehensive development of offshore fields and testing new oil prospecting and production technologies in the Caspian.
"The Caspian has become some sort of a testing range for the Russian oil and gas industry," he said, adding that this experience "will be useful in the future" when large-scale offshore development begins.
"We have to carry out a comprehensive programme for the development of resources in the northern part of the Caspian Sea. It should effectively tie in both private resources and budget resources," Putin said.
The prime minister stressed, "All works related to the development of the oilfield in the North Caspian are performed in strict compliance with the Tehran Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea ... that is, in compliance with international environmental standards."
Putin believes that the protection of the Caspian environment should be in the centre of attention of the Caspian Economic Cooperation Organisation, "a new international organisation we are creating together with Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan".
He believes that the implementation of "such ambitious programmes will enhance the energy potential of the Caspian region and augment the regional budget considerably."
"This will create new jobs not only for oil or gasmen, but also shipbuilders and people working in other sectors, fill Russian enterprises with long-term contracts for high-tech products," the prime minister said.
As an example, he named Astrakhan, where "a new industry - the construction of sea platforms - was created basically from scratch".
The Korchagin oilfield, 180 kilometres from Astrakhan and 200 kilometres from Makhachkala, is being developed by LUKOIL-Nizhnevolzhskneft, a subsidiary of LUKOIL. Drilling is being carried out from the stationary platform installed in the third quarter of 2009.
The platform consists of a production and living modules. The production module has a drilling rig with a lifting capacity of 560 tonnes to drill wells as long as 7,400 metres. The living module is intended for the accommodation of up to 105 employees.
Recoverable reserves of the oilfield are estimated at 28.8 million tonnes of oil and 63.3 billion cubic metres of gas. Maximum output is 2.5 million tonnes of oil and one billion cubic metres of natural gas a year.
Oil produced at the oilfield will be transported by a 58-kilometre pipeline with a diameter of 300 millimetres to the offshore transhipment point that includes a floating oil storage facility (double-bottom and double-hull oil tanker with a water displacement of 28,000 tonnes) and a single-point mooring place. Shuttle tankers with the deadweight of 6,000-12,000 tonnes will be used for further transportation of oil.
During drilling work, the platform used the so-called zero-discharge technology: waste resultant of production activities is not discharged into the sea but is collected into airtight containers and brought ashore to be rendered harmless and reprocessed. This principle will be also used in the operational drilling as well as at the stage of commercial production of hydrocarbon fuel. Over 120 million roubles have been assigned for the implementation of an ecological programme in the region in a period to end in 2014.
Within a period from 1999 to 2005, the LUKOIL Company discovered six oil and gas deposits in the northern part of the Caspian Sea area: these are the Korchagin one, Khvalynskoye (380 tonnes of reference fuel), at a distance of 170 km offshore, Rakushechnoye (126 million), Filanovsky (254 million) and Sarmatskoye (134 tonnes.) The aggregate reserves of the oil deposits -- proven, probable, and possible -- amount to 4,700 million barrels.
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