Russia Adopts Texas Drilling to Revive Soviet Oil Fields
By Stephen Bierman - Mar 18, 2013 8:01 AM ET
bloomberg.com
excerpts:
...TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest producer, will use hydraulic fracturing combined with horizontal drilling in almost half the wells it sinks this year, a sixfold increase in just two years, the company said. OAO Rosneft (ROSN), OAO Lukoil (LKOH) and OAO Gazprom Neft have similar plans...
...Apart from the Russian state, which gets half its revenue from oil and gas, the other winners are suppliers of people and equipment to frack wells including Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB), Weatherford International Ltd. (WFT) and C.A.T. Oil AG...
...State-controlled Rosneft will employ the technique at 50 wells this year at its largest production unit, up from just three in 2012, according to a company presentation. Gazprom Neft, the oil unit of Russia’s natural gas monopoly, will double the number of wells where fracks are used this year...
... Houston-based Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield- services provider, is vying with U.S. rivals such as Weatherford and Russian operators led by C.A.T. Oil.
Schlumberger has 12 separate fracturing fleets -- the combination of machines and people needed for fracking --working in Russia, a company executive said. C.A.T., which says it has a market-leading share of 31 percent, has 15...
...The market is growing fast. Lukoil didn’t use fracking in a horizontal well in Siberia until 2011, a company official said. Since then it’s undertaken 215 such wells, adding about 19 million barrels of production. Lukoil plans fracking in 450 horizontal wells over the next three years.
TNK-BP, which is being acquired by Rosneft, plans 102 horizontal wells with fracking this year, double last year’s number and almost half of all the wells it’s drilling, the company’s press service said...
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