The Russian Ministry of Energy may propose measures to boost extraction projects on the Russian sea shelf in 2019, following an inventory of oil deposits, Deputy Minister of Energy Pavel Sorokin said.

"At present, at the instruction of the prime minister, we are conducting an inventory of benefits, an inventory of the oil extraction economics at various deposits, and we will study the shelf projects as well. And I believe that next year, depending on the results of this work, we may propose a new package of incentives in order to boost extraction projects," Sorokin said in his speech at a conference, Development of Oil and Gas Resources of the Russian Sea Shelf: Arctic and the Far East.

He noted that extraction projects on the Russian sea shelf must, above all, be economically efficient. "To a certain degree, this may require additional incentives both for extraction and technological development," the deputy energy minister said.

The Ministry of Energy expects oil extraction on the Arctic continental shelf to rise to around 9-11 million metric tons and gas extraction to around 15 billion cubic metres by 2035, according to Sorokin.

Earlier, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Ministry of Energy submitted to the Government a roadmap for an inventory of deposits. The inventory will serve as the basis for preparing in 2019 a systematised list of incentives to encourage the extraction of oil, including hard-to-recover reserves. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak said that the Government and oil companies will have to sign investment agreements setting out deposit development commitments and deadlines.