OREANDA-NEWS. On July 09, 2008 The Gazprom’s subsidiary “Soyuzneftegas” Open Stock Company began drilling prospecting holes in the area of Northern Alambek of Akchalak investment unit in Ustyurt (Uzbekistan).

The chief executive of “Soyuzneftegas” Office in Uzbekistan, Maksut Anderjanov says that as a result of prospecting the area of Northern Alambek as a perspective gas field was discovered by Uzbek specialists of “Uzbekgeofizika”.

The drilling of holes is to discover new oil and gas perspective beds, indicate their geological and physical properties and produce industrial gas with condensate. Upon the end of drilling specialists will estimate the reserves of discovered deposits, determine the area’s geological structure and choose new fields for further prospecting.

M. Anderjanov states that the Siberian Service Closed Stock Company is drilling the prospecting holes. Before the drilling the Uzbek scientific research and designing institutes such as IG&RNIGM and UzLITIneftegas developed geological projects on construction and design of holes. Preliminary estimations show that the Northern Alambek has resource gas of 8.3 bl cubic meters and gas condensate of nearly 1 ml tons. Here the productive horizons may be between 3.5 and 3.9 th meters deep.

Geological works in the Gazprom’s seven investment units within the Ustyurt region are conducted in accordance with the Program on step-by-step geological works in Ustyurt region of Uzbekistan in 2006-2011 approved by the Uzbek government in December 2006.

The project is invested USD 400 ml during five years for prospecting works and USD 260 ml of them within the first three years. The five-year prospecting program is divided into three stages depending on implementation of each other and corrected according to prospecting geological data.

Since 2006 when drilling of first prospecting holes started in six perspective areas of Ustyurt region, their investment has exceeded USD 150 ml, M. Anderjanov says. The second stage of prospecting of the Ustyurt region begins in 2009. The program’s final stage in 2009-2011 will research discovered deposits.

Now the geological and physical works occupy an area of over 40 th square km. Here a seismological method with up-to-date equipment allowed specialists to prospect in a short period of time the geological structure of huge and less prospected area of investment units, discover three fields and develop six oil and gas structures having total perspective resources of more than 64 ml tons.