Arctic project faces never-before-seen obstacles

The challenges of exploration and development of arctic hydrocarbons is the newest frontier that energy companies are entering.

A representative for Herve Madeo, a vice president at Total, spoke Wednesday at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston. Total (25%), StatoilHydro (24%), and Gazprom (51%) are jointly developing the Shtokman. Madeo was in Russia attending to other issues.

The Shtokman field is one of the world’s largest natural gas fields, and it lies in the central part of the Russian sector of the Barents Sea, 600 kilometers (370 mi) north of Kola Peninsula. Its reserves are about 3.8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and more than 37 million tons of gas condensate. That would be $2-4 trillion worth at present prices.