Rosneft Oil Company chief executive officer Igor Sechin held a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 25, and on top of the agenda was progress on the giant Vostok Oil project in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Rosneft has pledged to deliver up to 30 million tonnes of oil  per year via the Northern Sea Route by 2024, and has signed up Singapore-based Trafigura as its oil trading partner. Trafigura is also negotiating an equity stake in Vostok Oil. Since 2013, Trafigura has been Rosneft’s main trading outlet on global oil markets.

The survey and design stage of the project to build a pipeline, which will be 770 kilometres long, and a port in Sever Bay have been finished. These projects will ensure the production, transportation and transhipment of up to 50 million tonnes of oil a year at the initial stage, and up to 100 million tonnes when the second stage is completed.

The project will also require 2,500MW of power generation and 3,500 kilometres of power lines.

Vostok Oil will also give an important boost to the Russian shipbuilding industry, with orders for ten Arc7 ice-class tankers placed with the Zvezda Shipbuilding Complex in Russia's Far Eastern region.

Arc7 ice-class LNG carriers for the existing Yamal LNG project were built at South Korean yards, but the Zvezda Shipbuilding Complex recently commenced steel cutting for its first vessel. Gas carriers are being built at both Russian and South Korean yards for Novatek's Arctic LNG 2 project.

Russian develpment bank VEB.RF will provide funding for the construction of the new ships, which can sail the Northern Route to Asia.

On October 28, Arctic LNG 2 entered into long-term charter agreements on six Arc7 ice-class LNG tankers with PAO Sovcomflot and Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), with the construction of the Arc7 ice-class LNG tankers to be built at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering shipyard.

The project has now successfully completed chartering of the required ice-class tanker fleet, taking into account the previously signed charter agreements for 15 similar LNG carriers to be built at the Zvezda shipyard.

The Arctic LNG 2 project will have three LNG liquefaction trains of 6.6 million tonnes per annum each. The project participants include Novatek (60%), Total (10%), China National Petroleum Corporation (10%), China National Offshore Oil Corporation (10%) and the consortium of Mitsui and JOGMEC (10%).