Min: Russia can auction Erginskoye till Jul, raise prepayment

MOSCOW, Mar 9 (PRIME) -- An auction for the Erginskoye oil deposit in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District is to be held until July 2017 with the initial payment to be most probably raised from the current 5.35 billion rubles, Natural Resources and Environment Minister Sergei Donskoi told PRIME on Thursday.

“The initial payment will most probably be adjusted upwards. The timeline of the auction is 2017,” Donskoi said. “The auction can be held until July if the document (government order) is promptly agreed on with the interested authorities.”

He said that other terms of the auction, listed in a government order for 2016 will not be revised.

The government planned to auction the right to develop the field for 5.35 billion rubles in early 2016, but the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry introduced the requirement of attracting foreign partners for development of the field. After that some media reported that oil major Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin asked President Vladimir Putin to abolish the requirement. In August, the ministry scrapped it, but it is yet to announce the date of a new auction.

The field’s recoverable oil reserves amount to 18.842 million tonnes under the C1 category and to 83.877 million tonnes under the C2 category, while the field’s oil-in-place reserves reach 64.971 million tonnes under the C1 category and 307.195 million tonnes under the C2 category.

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