United Shipbuilding Corporation has reached a preliminary agreement to build 15 drilling platforms for Exxon, a spokesman for the Russian state-owned shipbuilding giant has said.
Russia’s state-run company USC and US oil company Exxon have signed an agreement on the construction of drilling platforms for deposits in the Kara Sea, USC president Roman Trotsenko said on Friday.
He said that there are plans to build 15 oil platforms as part of the first phase, and that a total of 50 platforms are due to be constructed. Trotsenko’s statement came after Russia’s oil giant Rosneft and ExxonMobil inked a package of agreements on the creation of a joint venture earlier this month.
The documents also stipulated Rosneft getting access to a spate of Exxon’s projects in the Gulf of Mexico and its other projects outside the United States and Exxon joining Rosneft’s projects on Russia’s Arctic shelf. Additionally, the agreements envisaged USC’s active participation in these projects, and a Memorandum of Understanding was recently signed between USC and Exxon, according to USC spokesman Alexei Kravchenko.
"The project is currently under implementation, Kravchenko says, touting USC as a company that, in particular, deals with the construction of offshore drilling platforms and other sea-based equipment. As for ExxonMobil, it is one of the largest companies in the world, Kravchenko adds. The company has developed a rather large portfolio of advanced technologies specifically related to horizontal deep-see shelf-drilling and the construction of relevant equipment as well as methods of its secure transportation. This is why we are interested in getting access to these technologies which will help us to effectively extract oil and gas on the Russian shelf or in other countries."
Kravchenko also signaled USC’s readiness to bolster partnership ties with Exxon which he said could cooperate with USC in the maintenance of the drilling platforms the two companies plan to build. Kravchenko said that the USC-Exxon agreement on the construction of 15 platforms is due to be turned into a contract by the fall of 2013 which is to be followed by the creation of the relevant maintenance center.
Given that one platform will cost roughly 800 million dollars, the contract can be seen as a hefty one, Kravchenko said, adding that USC’s part of the work will amount to 400 million dollars. Right now, he said, the company is in the process of modernizing the existing capacities.