OREANDA-NEWS. February 17, 2011. Rosneft geologists have discovered two new oil & gas fields at the Sanarsky and Preobrazhensky license areas in East Siberia. Both areas are located in Katangsky District of Irkutsk Region, and were acquired by Rosneft at auctions in 2006 and 2007, reported the press-centre of Rosneft.

The new field at the Preobrazhensky area has been named in honor of Nikolai Lisovsky (1932-2009), an outstanding representative of the Russian oil industry who contributed to the discovery of about 300 fields and was the longstanding head of the Government’s Central Commission for Development of Hydrocarbon Fields.

Preliminary data suggest that the Sanarskoye and Lisovskoye fields each have initial recoverable reserves of about 80 million tonnes of oil. Oil pools at the new fields have complex geological structure and several other features, which make it likely that further geological exploration work will be needed in order to determine reserve quantities and best methods for their extraction.

The Sanarsky and Preobrazhensky areas are contiguous and are located, respectively, 130km and 70km to the west of the Verkhnechonsk oil & gas condensate field, which is already under development by Rosneft. The Verkhnechonsk field is 130km distant from the East Siberia–Pacific Ocean trunk pipeline.

Rosneft plans to carry out 1501 linear km of 2D seismic and 250 km2 of 3D seismic at fields in East Siberia during 2011. Drilling of five new wells is also planned: one each at the Mogdinsky, Preobrazhensky, Sanarsky and Danilovksy areas, and one well at the West-Chonsky area where the license is held by Vostok-Energy LLC (a joint venture between Rosneft and China’s Sinopec).

Rosneft is carrying out geological exploration work at 26 license areas in East Siberia (Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk regions) with current estimated resources of 2.5 billion tonnes of oil equivalent. Scheduled work at these areas in 2011 includes 2711 linear km of 2D seismic and 1296 km2 of 3D seismic as well as drilling of 12 exploration wells.