TNK-BP announces new oil find

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MOSCOW, Dec. 20 (UPI) -- Anglo-Russian oil venture TNK-BP announced it discovered two new oil fields in the Orenburg region in the south of the country.

TNK-BP said new fields in the Pokrovsko-Sorochinskiy and Radovskiy blocks contain a combined 5 million tons of potential recoverable reserves.

"The future development plan for the new fields includes a detailed appraisal of the acreage to ensure that the reserves are recovered as efficiently as possible," the company said in a statement.

TNK-BP this year invested $9.7 million in exploratory drilling, up 48 percent from the previous year. This effort, the company said, has helped it stabilize production in region, which has been producing oil for more than 75 years.

"The application of new technologies is not only helping to meet production targets but also opens up new development opportunities," Oleg Dimov, TNK-BP's director of operations in Orenburg, said in a statement.

Russian oil company Rosneft this year agreed to acquire TNK-BP in deals with British energy company BP and AAR, a group representing the interests of four Russian billionaires in the consortium.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying during a news conference Thursday that he'd like AAR to invest their $28 billion from the deal in Russia.