Minister sees Russia’s shelf oil profitable at price of $200/bbl

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Sochi, Oct 1 (PRIME) – Russia’s shelf oil production will be profitable only if the oil price rises above U.S. $200 per barrel, Natural Resources and Environment Minister Dmitry Kobylkin told PRIME on Monday on the sidelines of a forum.

“My personal opinion is that everything is very expensive on the shelf, because one exploratory well costs about 30–40 billion rubles. This is why a barrel should cost over $200 if we want to develop the fields there. I don’t know when we will start that and whether we need that today,” he said.

“We created all the necessary infrastructure on the continent, in Western Siberia, Orenburg, Samara, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Hard-to-recover oil reserves may be less profitable, but they are more attractive from the point of view of infrastructure that is already built. There is nothing there (on the shelf). I wouldn’t take any risks in technologies for now. We should maybe wait for a bit and work on different options.”

(65.5906 rubles – U.S. $1)

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