LUKoil buys half of Vietnamese field

The Vietnamese government has approved the sale of a 50 percent stake in a project to develop the Hanoi Trough-02 (??-02) block to LUKoil Overseas, the company's foreign operations subsidiary. The stake was bought from Quad Energy S.A., which holds another 50 percent, this April. LUKoil Overseas will also operate the Vietnamese project. In April 2010, LUKoil said it found several promising projects with expected reserves of over 180 million tons of oil equivalent at the ??-02 block at a shelf of the South China Sea. LUKoil has lalso received approval from the Romanian authorities to develop two hydrocarbon blocks on the Black Sea shelf, LUKoil said on Thursday. "The Romanian government has ratified concession agreements for prospecting and development of the Est Rapsodia and Trident blocks in the Romanian sector of the Black Sea," the company said in a statement. LUKoil Overseas has an 80 percent stake and manages the project, while U.S. Vanco International owns 20 percent. The two blocks are located on the depth of 90 to 1,000 meters with distance to coastline from 60 to 100 kilometers.