OREANDA-NEWS. April 30, 2010. About 100 new wells are to be drilled at the Varyoganneftegaz fields in 2010. “The Company has not achieved such drilling rates for a long time”, said Sergey Karavaev, General Director of Varyoganneftegaz. At a conservative estimate, this will bring ca. 450,000 extra tons of crude to the subsidiary, the press-centre of TNK-BP reported.

About 11 drilling rigs are currently operated at the oil fields. Nine out of them are used for development drilling, and two rigs are installed at exploration wells.

Apart from traditional areas where proactive construction of new wells is underway, Ven-Yoganskoe and Severo-Khokhryakovskoe fields where operations used to be suspended are currently involved in exploration activities. Good performance of exploratory wells has confirmed availability of hydrocarbon reserves at the Verkhne-Kolik-Yoganskoe field. It is worth noting that oilmen now have to deal with hard-to-recover reserves. In order to decide upon feasibility of developing this or that site, profound geological and seismic studies are conducted. But all prospecting and exploration costs are worthwhile. This tactics is applied at all fields of the Varyoganneftegaz Target Subsidiary.