Rosneft taps into Vietnamese gas field

After boasting of production gains, a Vietnamese subsidiary of Russian oil company Rosneft said it completed drilling operations at an offshore field.

Rosneft Vietnam said it completed drilling at an offshore exploration well and made a discovery of gas of an undisclosed volume.

Russian natural gas company Gazprom estimates the Moc Tinh and Hai Thach fields off the Vietnamese coast hold around 1.2 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas. The Nagumanovskoye field holds around 7 million barrels of recoverable oil reserves.

Rosneft's counterpart Gazprom Neft, the oil division of Gazprom, last year laid out terms of bilateral cooperation with PetroVietnam, targeting a 49 percent share of the Dung Quat refinery in Vietnam, which refines about 48 million barrels of oil per year. Gas company Gazprom and PetroVietnam laid out framework conditions for joint cooperation two years ago.

Those agreements came as Russian energy interests align more closely with those of Asian economies looking to take on more oil and natural gas

Rosneft this week reported total hydrocarbon production was up 0.2 percent from the first quarter and 0.7 percent year-on-year.

The company credited the increase in production to an intensified drilling program, which was up 16 percent from the first quarter.