OREANDA-NEWS. Tatneft is preparing an agreement with Shell, offering strategic partnership on development of heavy oil deposits, Veles Capital, an investment company, informs with reference to Tatneft. Previous messages indicated interest of many companies besides Shell to develop bitumen deposits of Tatarstan, in particular from companies like ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Repsol and Worley Parsons. There are 450 natural bitumen deposits known in Tatarstan, 150 of those are located in operating territories of Tatneft, 12 deposits are now prepared for industrial development. Some estimates say that resources of natural bitumen of Tatarstan make up 1.5 to 7 bln tons, with an average depth of 80-200 m.

To remind, the development of heavy oil deposit is planned in the context of reducing sulfur in Russian exported oil through sending extracted commodity to Russian petrochemical plants, without exporting it along with light oil. Top suppliers of sulfur-bearing mixtures are Tatarstan’s enterprises. In the opinion of Veles' experts, this agreement will contribute to Urals oil sort quality, possibly it reaching the quality of Brent.