Russia's Putin tours new rig in Arctic oil drive

cudabachi

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080711175151.j2k3z1z7&show_article=1

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday toured a new Arctic oil rig intended to boost Moscow's position in the intensifying competition for northern energy reserves.

Putin also met ministers and top oil executives in the Severodvinsk shipyard to discuss prospects for developing more Arctic fields, which are estimated to contain up to a quarter of Russia's proven oil and gas reserves.

"The Arctic zone is a guarantee of Russia's economic power. Oil, gas, gold, diamonds and phosphates -- it's all there," Artur Chilingarov, a member of parliament who is also an Arctic explorer, told AFP before the meeting.

"We need to find new oil fields ... We need to go offshore," he said.

Officials said the rig, which is expected to be completed in 2010, is the first in the world able to operate in temperatures as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit) and withstand the impact of pack ice.

"Building technology to tap offshore Arctic reserves is a priority for our civilian production," read a statement from the rig's constructor, Sevmash, a secretive plant in northern Russia that also builds nuclear submarines.

cudabachi

And a few interesting quotes from the same story:

Russia says it has to drill in the Arctic as existing oil fields are drying up.

At Friday's meeting, Putin said Russia's declining oil production meant the industry was at a "critical juncture" and proposed to cut taxes and slash bureaucracy to encourage new oil development in Arctic regions.

"The prospects are good but some tendencies worry us. The rate of growth of production has gone down ... In the first quarter of this year, production even declined 0.3 percent," Putin told the assembled ministers and oil executives.

Plantagenet

Cool.

Maybe the US can buy a couple of the Russian-made oil rigs when we allow exploring in the Arctic parts of Alaska again.

mos6507

Putin is a work of art. He sounds even more unconcerned about the environment than Bush. I guess when your country is in a cold climate you don't give a damn about global warming.
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Plantagenet