Lukoil announced Tuesday that it has started production drilling at the Imilorsko-Istochniy license area in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous district in central Russia. The firm said that the start of drilling has put it "considerably ahead of schedule" in the implementation of its "Early Oil" project on the license area. The original plan had been to begin production drilling at the site in September 2014, and Lukoil expects to lift its first oil from the project ahead of schedule as well.

So far, 14 miles of oil pipelines, 26 miles of roads and a 240-foot bridge across the Entl-Imiyagun River have been constructed, and four well pads are under development. 3D seismic data has also been collected over an area exceeding 575 square miles.

Lukoil said that, for purposes of follow-up exploration and study of the Imilorsko-Istochniy license area in the coming years, additional seismic surveys will be performed at the site, 20 historic wildcat wells will be retested and 11 new wildcat wells will be drilled. Lukoil added that C1 and C2 recoverable reserves estimated within the license area total 855 million tons and 193 million tons of oil respectively (or 6.2 billion barrels and 1.4 billion barrels).