(Yicai Global) Feb. 4 -- China's Zhongman Petroleum and Natural Gas Group has inked an agreement with a unit of Russia's largest non-state gas producer NOVATEK for a RUB1.7 billion (USD270 million) oilfield drilling project in the Yarudeyskoye Oilfield in Siberia, the Chinese firm better known as ZPEC announced yesterday.

NOVATEK's Yargeo subsidiary, the owner, will make payments in accordance with the progress of the project, whose contract runs until April 30 next year.

 This is the second boring service agreement the Shanghai-based company has signed with Yargeo. The two struck a deal worth about RUB2 billion in November 2018, also for the Yarudeyskoye Oilfield, which is in Russia's oil- and gas-rich Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug in the country's far north, where NOVATEK is based. The area's natural gas production makes up 90 percent of Russia's total and almost one-fifth of the globe's. 

ZPEC has actively expanded overseas in recent years, landing other drilling gigs in Iraq, Ukraine, Pakistan and other countries. It also signed a contract with a unit of Russia's largest oil company Rosneft for boring services in the same region in May last year.

Editor: Ben Armour