OREANDA-NEWS. October 26, 2010. NOVATEK (“NOVATEK” and/or the “Company”) announced the commencement of the final stage of Phase Two development at its wholly-owned Yurkharovskoye field. As part of the Company’s capital investment program, two additional processing trains for separating natural gas were launched at the field, thus increasing the Yurkharovskoye field’s annual productive capacity to approximately 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas and approximately three million tons of unstable gas condensate.

According to NOVATEK’s CEO, Leonid Mikhelson, “The Company has been consistent in its focused approach to implementing its strategy to increase hydrocarbon production and processing capacities as evidenced by our successes at the Yurkharovskoye field.  Moreover, the field’s development program has become a platform for implementing new drilling, production and processing technologies, as well as innovative solutions, which may be applied to our new and future projects.”

The Yurkharovskoye field is located within the Polar Circle southeast of the Tazovsky peninsula. The field is licensed to our wholly-owned subsidiary OOO NOVATEK-YURKHAROVNEFTEGAS, and has been producing natural gas and gas condensate since 2003. The field’s proven (SEC) reserves at 31 December 2009 amount to 443.6 bcm of natural gas and 22.4 million tons of liquid hydrocarbons. In the first nine months of 2010, the field produced 17.5 bcm of natural gas and 1.5 million tons of unstable gas condensate. The Yurkharovskoye field is the largest of NOVATEK’s exploration and production assets in terms of reserves and production and is the driver for the Company’s mid-term production and reserves growth.