Vostok Oil: Russia’s sleeping giant

Rosneft’s Arctic megaproject is happening despite sanctions, a lack of foreign investment and OPEC+ restrictions. But it will take a long time for its colossal potential to be realised

Russia’s state-owned Rosneft is pressing on with the country’s next major oil development, Vostok Oil, which at its height the company estimates could produce the equivalent of nearly a fifth of current national output. It is doing so in defiance of ever tightening Western sanctions on the Russian oil industry There is a consensus among experts that Vostok Oil is happening, with or without sanctions or increasingly hard-to-secure foreign investment. But how quickly its production will scale up over the coming years will depend on how the project fits within Russia’s OPEC+ quota. Rosneft is likely to leverage its significant lobbying power to get a favourable outcome, going head to head with