Bashneft finds oil in western Siberia
Bashneft has announced that it has found oil in a test well drilled at the Pecherinskoye field, part of the Khazarsky
concession in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous district of western Siberia.
The company won 25-year concessions for the Khazarsky block and the Kirsko-Kotynskoye field in a tender last year.
The properties are believed to contain about 138 million metric tons of crude.
Bashneft, based in the republic of Bashkortostan, began working in western Siberia last year, extracting its first
oil from the Kirsko-Kotynskoye field. The company has already extracted 3,000 metric tons of crude from its new
fields since January 1 and hopes to produce a total of 25,000 metric tons in 1999.
Bashneft managers said last year they were eager to expand beyond their home base into west Siberia. To work towards
this goal, they set up a new branch, Bashsibneft, to seek rights to Siberian fields. They also established an office
for Bashsibneft in the Nizhnevartovsk district.
Bashneft's Director General Ampir Syrtlanov said last year that these Siberian projects were a high priority for the
company because they could boost the company's profile on the Russian market. Syrtlanov also noted that the vast
fields of West Siberia could help Bashneft secure supplies for the petrochemical plants of Baskhortostan -- and
secure jobs for the employees of those plants. (Bashkortostan's own fields hold much less oil than those of western
Siberia, and Bashkir crude is of lower quality.)
The republic is home to no less than five oil refineries. Four of them were put under Bashneft's control in March of
1998, when the company signed a merger agreement with the republican petrochemical concern Bashneftekhim. Bashneft
managers have also expressed interest in working in Iraq.
