Russia’s Rosneft has appointed a new head of its flagship Vostok Oil project, which is expected to produce up to 2 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2030, mainly for export to Asia.
Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, has named Andrei Lazeyev, former head of Rosneft’s refining unit Bashneft, as head of Vostok Oil, according to the state register. He will replace Vladimir Chernov during the position exchange. Mr Chernov was named head of Bashneft last month.
The change in leadership is aimed at accelerating the development of oil fields, the Kommersant newspaper reported last month.
Some analysts, including at brokerage firm BCS in Moscow, have expressed doubts about the project’s ability to meet the goal of starting production this year. They predicted a delay of at least a year, citing the OPEC+ oil supply reduction deal to support prices.
Rosneft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the management shakeup and the project’s implementation.
Mr Lazeyev, who worked for Russian-British oil producer TNK-BP, joined Rosneft as chief geologist in 2013, after it acquired TNK-BP. He joined Rosneft’s board in 2022 and took over as head of Bashneft, Kommersant reported.
Commodity traders Trafigura, Vitol and Mercantile joined the project in 2020-21, but left after Moscow sent its troops to Ukraine in 2022.
Rosneft has held talks with Chinese, Indian and Japanese companies to join the project, but these discussions have not yet come to fruition.
If it materialises, Vostok Oil’s expected output would be roughly equivalent to the entire North Sea oil market, or between 1.8 million and 2 million bpd.
It would also be comparable to production from the Samotlor oil field in western Siberia in the 1970s and 1980s.
Vostok Oil’s Bukhta Sever loading terminal, located in the Yenisei Bay on the Taymyr Peninsula, is expected to handle 600,000 bpd when completed this year, around 15% of the Russian total and as much as current loadings of Primorsk, the largest Russian port on the Baltic Sea.
Rosneft said in March it had started construction of the country’s largest oil loading dock at Bukhta Sever, where harsh Arctic weather conditions are one of the project’s many challenges.
The company is also building a 770 km long oil pipeline to the terminal. Rosneft said in its financial report that by the end of March, more than 250 kilometers of the pipeline had been welded. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Writing by Jason Neely and Barbara Lewis)
