New Oil Deposit Discovered In Barents Sea

First experimental oil influx has been extracted from the well bored in the Barents Sea shelf near Pechorskaya Guba. Officials in the Murmansk Region administration said it was the first oil-bearing well in this portion of the sea. The well was bored from July to September by a floating rig. The well's depth is 4,300 meters, it is located 30 km away from the coast. The work was carried out with federal budget funding and under a license issued following the tender that the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources had held in early 2001. The new deposit will be evaluated after the well's test, however experts' forecasts are "optimistic," according to the Murmansk Region administration.