Our Arctic Neighbors: Lukoil ready to bid for Nenets licenses

The economic crisis has hit the oil industry in Russia’s Nenets Autonomous Okrug, but one major is still keen to expand its activities there. The CEO of Lukoil, Vagit Alekperov, told Bloomberg in mid-April that the company is ready to bid for the Trebs and Titov fields, said to be the largest untapped fields in the European part of Russia. The two fields are located near Lukoil’s Varandey export terminal on the Barents Sea. Three years ago, state-owned Rosneft also expressed an interest in bidding for licenses to develop Trebs and Titov. In March Russia’s deputy prime minister with responsibility for oil and gas issues, Igor Sechin, said that the government would not make the licenses available yet.

—Sarah Hurst