Russia to Cancel BP, ExxonMobil Offshore Fields Licenses

Russia's natural resources ministry will draw up new deadlines for consortia hoping to develop huge fields.
Current deadlines for developing the fields including the offshore Shtokman field in Arctic and Kovykta in eastern Siberia have proved unreal because of the inaccessibility of the fields.
That has raised the prospect of canceling licenses held by operators including BP and ExxonMobil Corp.
A ministerial commission met on Tuesday to review terms for a number of fields and found that license holders had ruptured terms mostly related to development and drilling schedules.
The Shtokman deposit, located on the shelf of the Barents Sea beyond the Arctic Cirle, has reserves of 3.2 trillion cubic metres of gas and 31 million tonnes of gas condensate.
Kovykta is one of the largest gas fields in the world with two trillion cubic metres of reserves. BP 's Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, has already signed agreements to supply gas to China and Korea in 2008 and plans to build a 4,900-km (3,000 mile) pipeline from Kovykta.