Rosneft announces Kara comeback

Sechin confirms drilling has restarted in the Russian Arctic shelf, despite high costs and ongoing sanctions

Russia’s Rosneft has resumed drilling in the high-cost Arctic Kara Sea after a six-year hiatus, its CEO Igor Sechin announced in mid-August. The move comes despite the company making steep cuts to its upstream spending in response to the pandemic and its economic impact. Interest in Russia’s Arctic shelf reached a new high in September 2014, when Rosneft and its US partner ExxonMobil made the Pobeda oil discovery in the Kara Sea. By Rosneft’s estimates, the find held 130mn t (953mn bl) of valuable ultra-light oil and 422bn m3 of gas. A week after its announcement, though, Washington and its allies slapped sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea, prohibiting Western firms from the co