"The joint venture in Yakutia will be established by the end of 2008 and the parties are currently holding talks on exactly which projects the Japanese side will participate in," the republic's administration said on Wednesday.
JOGMEC has already established a joint venture with the Irkutsk oil company INK-Server to explore and produce crude oil in East Siberia, the administration said.
At a meeting held in August with Yakutia's deputy industry minister, Albert Kondratyev, managers from JOGMEC displayed interest in the development of Yakutia's oil and gas industry as the East Siberia - Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline is expected to come online soon.
The ESPO pipeline is slated to pump up to 1.6 million barrels of crude per day from Siberia to Russia's Far East and then onto China and the Asia-Pacific region.
The pipeline's first leg, estimated at $11 billion, is expected to be commissioned in late 2009.
The second leg will stretch for 2,100 kilometers (1,304 miles) from the Amur Region town of Skovorodino to the Pacific. It will pump 367.5 million barrels of oil annually. The capacity of the Taishet-Skovorodino pipeline, being built as part of the project's first leg, is also expected to increase to 588 million barrels from the initial 220.5 million bbl.
