* Sechin heads to Japan to discuss Russian offshore oil, gas
* Rosneft offered to increase oil supplies to China
MOSCOW, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Igor Sechin, the head of Russia'stop crude producer Rosneft, will discuss offshoreprojects with Japanese companies in the final leg of a tripaimed at luring energy-hungry Asian firms into tapping Russia'svast Arctic resources.
Sechin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is due to arrive in Japan on Tuesday after a two-day visit toChina, Rosneft's press service told Reuters.
Russia, the world's top crude producer, will need hundredsof billions of dollars to unlock the potential of the Arctic. Ithas been seeking partnership with overseas companies forexpertise and finance and has already signed deals with ExxonMobil, Statoil and Eni.
"Sechin is going today to discuss large-scale Rosneftoffshore projects with Japanese companies," a Rosneftspokeswoman said.
Putin has made a so-called "eastern vector" of energydevelopment a priority and has urged Russian companies to forgecloser ties with Asian consumers.
Russian firms, including top gas producer Gazprom,have been losing market share in Europe, a traditional exportmarket for Russian energy, as the European Union seeks todiversify sources of oil and gas supply.
Last week, industry sources told Reuters that Rosneft wasseeking to borrow from Chinese state firm CNPC in exchange forpossibly doubling oil supplies, which would make Beijing thelargest consumer of Russian oil and divert supplies away fromEurope.
Rosneft, however, said it was not in talks about obtaining aloan from China.
In China, the world's top energy consumer, Sechin offered toincrease oil supplies and proposed that Chinese firms take partin an ambitious project to develop offshore oil and gas,estimated at 100 billion tonnes of oil equivalent in Russia.
Only Rosneft and Gazprom, both state-owned, have exclusiveaccess to Russian undersea mineral resources.
LARGEST LNG CONSUMER
Japan is the world's largest consumer of liquefied naturalgas (LNG) and has increased consumption, shipped in by tankers,after the disaster at its Fukushima nuclear plant in March 2011.
Rosneft may also chip in to feed Japan with frozen gas,albeit in the more distant future, as it mulls possibly buildingits own LNG plant on the Pacific island of Sakhalin, where italready pumps oil in partnership with the U.S. major ExxonMobiland Japan's Sodeco.
Sources at Rosneft told Reuters the plant might potentiallyproduce up to 10 million tonnes of LNG a year - the same amountas a Shell -led plant, also in Sakhalin, Russia's onlyactive LNG project.
BP (BP.)
