July 2 (Bloomberg) -- OAO Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned natural-gas monopoly, started exploration drilling at an offshore field in the country’s Far East about five years after squeezing out Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.

Gazprom will drill the Kirinsky field off Sakhalin Island to supply gas to the local market starting in 2014, the company said today in an e-mailed statement. The deposit, with 75.4 billion cubic meters of gas and 8.6 million tons of condensate, is part of the Sakhalin-3 project in the Sea of Okhotsk.

“This will be the first project on the Sakhalin shelf that will be developed purely by a Russian company,” according to Moscow-based Gazprom.

In 2004, Russia annulled a 1993 tender that had awarded Mobil Corp., now part of Exxon Mobil, and Texaco Inc., now part of Chevron, rights to explore Kirinsky. The government at the time criticized the U.S. producers for a lack of progress at the development. The companies said they had sought to negotiate production-sharing agreements to limit their tax liability.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last week invited Royal Dutch Shell Plc to participate in Sakhalin-3 after the Anglo-Dutch company and Gazprom inaugurated Russia’s first liquefied natural gas plant at the Sakhalin-2 development earlier this year.

OAO Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil producer, and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., known as Sinopec, are exploring the Veninsky block, part of Sakhalin-3.

Exxon Mobil is cooperating with Rosneft, India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp. and Japan’s Sakhalin Oil & Gas Development Co., or Sodeco, to develop the Sakhalin-1 project in the Sea of Okhotsk.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 2, 2009 04:26 EDT