Map of the Trebs and Titov Oil Fields. Trebs is the circle on the left, and Titov is on the right. © Kommersant
Bashneft has bought the Trebs and Titov onshore oil deposits in Russia’s Timan-Pechora province for a reported 18.5 billion rubles ($587 million). The Russian government had earlier sought to keep the deposits under the government’s ownership, since the two constitute strategic oil deposits with 78.1 million tons and 132.8 million tons of oil, respectively. However, due to budget deficits, the government decided to auction off the oilfields.
After months of analyzing the applications, the government finally approved the sale of Trebs and Titov to Bashneft, Russian’s seventh-largest oil producer. Bashneft was the only real bidder, and it offered 1.7% more than the starting price of 18.171 billion rubles. Only two companies’ bids were allowed to go forward in September: those of Bashneft and Surgutneftegas. However, the latter company never produced a feasability study, nor did it pay the fee required in advance, so its bid failed. According to CIS Oil & Gas, the government initially sought 60 billion rubles (approximately $2 billion), so it received only about a quarter of its desired amount.
The Deputy Head of the Natural Resources Ministry, Sergey Donskoy, told the newspaper Kommersant that Bashneft can expect to receive its license to begin activities by the end of this year or by early 2011 [1]. Presently, most of Bashneft’s activities are located in Bashkortostan, western Siberia and Orenburg [2]. The addition of the Trebs and Titov fields should increase Bashneft’s reserves by 70%.
The oil fields are located south of the Pechora Sea in the Nenets okrug. Below is a map from the Russian website Marker showing the various oil fields in the Timan-Pechora Basin Province. More information about the province’s oil reserves in English is available from the USGS here: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1999/ofr-99-0050/OF99-50G/.
News links
[1] “Bashneft receive Trebs and Titov without competition,” Kommersant
[2] “Bashneft receives a license to Trebs and Titov, says MEP,” Kommersant
“Russia gets license for Trebs, Titov deposits without auction,” RIA Novosti
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