Letter from Moscow: Rosneft bucks trend with Arctic push

At a time when many IOCs are shunning large-scale investments in oil extraction, Russia’s biggest oil producer is pressing ahead with perhaps its largest ever undertaking

Russian oil champion Rosneft capped off 2020, a year mired by global capex constraints, with the closure of one of the biggest foreign investment deals in Russia’s oil industry in recent years. The state-controlled oil champion revealed at the end of December the sale of a 10pc stake in its Vostok Oil project in the Russian Arctic to Singapore-headquartered commodities trader Trafigura. The price tag was not disclosed, although Trafigura corporate filings show it obtained a €5.78bn ($7bn) loan facility with the Credit Bank of Moscow less than a week earlier. Going big Vostok Oil comprises over a dozen oilfields in Russia’s far north harbouring 44bn bl of liquid resources, according to Rosnef