MOSCOW, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Oil producer Rosneft plans to invest around 92 billion roubles ($2.8 billion) by 2015to develop three fields in East Siberia, key to honouring itsexport deals with Asia, the company said on Thursday.
In a strategic shift in its energy policy, Russia launchedthe East Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) oil pipeline in 2009 tosupply fast-growing Asian markets and in particular China, theworld's top oil importer.
Rosneft, the world's biggest listed producer with a dailyaverage of 4.2 million barrels of oil this year, plans to tripleoil exports to China to some 1 million barrels per day (bpd) inthe coming years.
Last month, it said it was delaying peak output at the EastSiberian Vankor field, which will now produce 500,000 bpd by2019 from an earlier expected 2013-2014, and only with the helpof three other fields acquired via this year's $55 billiontakeover of TNK-BP.
Its Suzun, Tagul and Lodochnoye fields "will allow it toload ESPO (with oil) for a long perspective", Rosneft said onThursday. Rosneft's spokeswoman said that the 92 billion roublesof investments are for three fields apart from Vankor.
Vankor alone pumped an average 435,000 bpd in October,according to Energy Ministry data.
New fields will boost Rosneft annual oil production growthto 3-4 percent after 2017, the company told analysts this week.
It expects to add an average 1 percent of production between2014 and 2017 by focusing on new technologies like horizontalwells with multi-stage fracturing, while maintaining flatoutput at its core brownfield sites.