Moscow: The Kremlin might give Lukoil the green light to start drilling in Arctic waters.
The moves comes after the Russian government said it is looking to open up the Arctic shelf for private companies. This could open up for Russia’s biggest private oil producer, Lukoil.
The key projects in the Arctic are controlled by Rosneft and Gazprom, both of whom have been hit hard by sanctions imposed on the US. This pair are the only two who have licenses to operate in Russian Arctic waters as federal legislation allows only state-owned companies permission to operate so far north.
Now however the government supports softening the strict regime of permission to work on the shelf as the state owned companies are not managing to perform as planned.
There are 137 licenses for shelf development with 40 of these owned by private companies, given before the legislation was changed in favour of state companies.
Surely that storage will be developed in future by all countries, as the last barrier! For now it’s not required! Surely western trans national companies like to get it and they will increase sunctions against Russia, but my personal opinion that as quicker we will start developing new technologies, as faster countries what based their bugged on resources will become weaker! So, all this big game near Ukrainian crisis and sunctions against Russia and some eastern countries is just a big fake with blindly stupid explanations and interests of some very and very reach people and nothing else!