Lukoil’s Caspian fields hit output milestone

Lukoil, Russia’s largest privately-held oil company, has reached a milestone of nine million tonnes of oil produced at the Vladimir Filanovsky and Yuri Korchagin fields in the Caspian Sea.

The company said on Monday that “the most significant gain” in its offshore production was observed since the beginning of commercial operation of the V. Filanovsky field which was launched by Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, in the autumn of 2016.

One million tonnes of oil were produced in early 2017 at the field from four horizontal wells with the fifth well under construction.

Vladimir Filanovsky field

According to Lukoil, zhe Vladimir Filanovsky field is the largest post-Soviet discovery in Russia. Commercial operation of the field, with C1+C2 reserves, equal 129 million tonnes of oil and 30 billion cubic meters of gas. The production rate at plateau phase will equal six million tonnes a year.

The field is located in the northern Caspian Sea, 220 km away from the city of Astrakhan. Water depth in the field’s area ranges from seven to 11 meters.

Yuri Korchagin field

Yuri Korchagin field is an offshore oil field located 180 kilometers from Astrakhan and 240 kilometers from Makhachkala at a sea depth of 11–13 meters.

In 1999, Lukoil started exploratory drilling at the field using the Astra jack-up rig. Production at the field was launched in April 2010.

Lukoil reached a landmark by passing five million tonnes (38.6 million barrels) of produced oil at the field in the summer of 2015. By the end of 2016, the fields production passed six million tonnes with a production of 1.4 million tonnes of oil last year. Yuri Korchagin’s proven oil reserves stand at 113 million barrels.