Rosneft Oil Company and Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) signed a contract to supply up to 2 million tonnes of oil to India via the port of Novorossiysk by the end of 2020, Rosneft says in a press release.
The signing took place during the visit of the Chief Executive Officer of Rosneft Igor Sechin to New Delhi. During this visit, a working meeting was also held with Indian minister of oil and gas Dharmendra Pradhan.
An important subject of talks between Sechin and Pradhan was the issue of providing Indian consumers with quality crude and petroleum-based products, including the increase in Russian oil supplies to India. During the meeting, the parties discussed the ongoing joint projects of Rosneft and Indian companies, including Sakhalin-1, Taas-Yuryakh, the Vankor cluster (a consortium of Indian companies owns 49% in the Vankor cluster field), Far East LNG, and Nayara Energy.
A separate topic of discussion was the matter of Indian companies’ participation in implementing the Vostok Oil project aimed to establish a new world-class oil and gas province on the North of Russian Krasnoyarsk Territory. As Dharmendra Pradhan said, the Indian side has already made a principal decision to participate in the project. In order to negotiate the terms of Indian companies’ entering Vostok Oil in the shortest time possible the parties agreed to create a regular working group of representatives of Russian and Indian companies.
Vostok Oil’s competitive advantage lies in its proximity to the Northern Sea Route, a unique transport corridor. Its use provides the opportunity to supply crude from the project’s fields in two directions at once - to European and Asian markets. The implementation of the project guarantees that the task to increase the cargo traffic on the Northern Sea Route up to 80 million tonnes by 2024 set by the President of the Russian Federation will be achieved.
Rosneft has been actively developing an integral format of cooperation with the Indian partners involving the whole process chain from production to oil refining and marketing of oil products.
Since 2016 the Indian companies ONGC Videsh Ltd., Oil India Limited, Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroresources own 49.9% of Vankorneft subsidiary. This company is located in Krasnoyarsk province and is developing Vankor oil and gas condensate field - the largest among the fields that were discovered in Russia in the past twenty five years.
Also, a consortium of Indian companies (Oil India Limited, Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroresources) owns 29.9% of the company Taas Yuryakh Neftegazodobycha which holds licenses for the areas of the Central Block of Srednebotuobinskoe Field and Kurungskiy license area (the other shareholders are Rosneft and BP).
Since 2001 the Indian company ONGC Videsh Ltd is a shareholder of Sakhalin-1 Project (the other shareholders are Rosneft, ExxonMobil and the Japanese company Sodeco). The cumulative production under the project is 119.7 mmt of oil and condensate. Consumers in Khabarovsk Territory sold 27.1 bcm m of gas.
Rosneft owns the stock of shares (49.13%) of the Indian company Nayara Energy that includes world class assets such as refinery in Vadinar with a 20 mtpa capacity. This refinery is the second largest in India and is one of the most technologically advanced in the world. The consortium is reviewing an option of a two-fold increase of the refining throughput at the Vadinar Refinery. In the first stage, the consortium plans to invest USD 850 million towards the building of a petrochemical unit in Vadinar within two years. Nayara Energy business also includes a deep-water port which can harbor super large VLCC class tankers and one of the largest retail networks in India now comprising more than 5,600 gas stations.