The company's Vice President Stepan Zemlyuk said at the third Russian oil and gas congress that the company would start producing early oil and gas at another major project, Sakhalin-I, in which Rosneft owns a 20% stake.
The vice president said that Rosneft had great expectations for Sakhalin-IV and the Sakhalin V, which also involved British Petroleum.
The official also said Rosneft was completing a geological survey of the Vankorskoye deposit and planned to start the project's large-scale implementation in 2006. Zemlyuk stressed that Rosneft could consider attracting partners to the project after survey work had been finished.
The Vankorskoye field is based in the Turukhansky region of the Krasnoyarsk Territory (Siberia). Its oil reserves are estimated at 125 million metric tons, and natural gas at 76.8 billion cubic meters.
According to Zemlyuk, the project has a number of problems. For example, the oil transportation route has not yet been determined.
The vice president assured his audience that the Vankorskoye field could yield 14 million metric tons of oil a year. The company, he continued, had put $4 billion into the project and was planning to produce its first oil there in 2008.
"Rosneft is going to make its way into the world's top ten oil producers by 2015," Zemlyuk said. "I hope it will be among the top five."
The company was previously reported to be planning to produce over 78 million metric tons of oil in 2005.
The Severnaya Neft open joint-stock company, which is 100% Rosneft-owned, works on 15 deposits in the Komi Republic and the Nenets Autonomous Area (in the north of European Russia). It is expected to produce approximately 7 million metric tons of oil by 2006.
Rosneft considers the Timan-Pechora province to be the most promising region after the Western Siberian oil and gas province. Also in the north of European Russia and extending further on an adjacent shelf, Rosneft is proactively developing it in a joint venture with Polyarnoye Siyaniye.
