North Atlantic Drilling’s West Alpha rig is being used to drill the well to a maximum depth of 7km while the drilling operations likely to take about two months to complete.
Rosneft and ExxonMobil developed an iceberg collision prevention plan to make sure that the rig can operate safely in severe ice conditions.
Rosneft head Igor Sechin said: "The start of exploratory drilling in the Kara Sea is the most important event of the year for the global oil and gas industry.
"As a result of this work we are planning to discover a new Kara Sea oil province. Development of the Arctic shelf has a huge multiplicative effect on the whole Russian economy."
The Universitetskaya structure covers 1,200,000km area with a 550m high hydrocarbon trap.
It’s resources account to over 1.3 billion tons of oil equivalent and about 30 structures were identified in three East Prinovozemelskiy areas of the Kara Sea.
The entire resource base of the three areas is expected at 87 billion barrels or 13 billion tonnes of oil equivalent.
Image: North Atlantic Drilling’s West Alpha rig. Photo: Courtesy of Rosneft.
