Crimean Authorities Claim Oil and Gas Fields

Crimean authorities took control of Ukraine's Black Sea and Sea of Azov oil and gas fields off the coast of the peninsula.

The speaker of Crimea's parliament Volodymyr Konstantinov told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the Russian companies including energy giant Gazprom should be involved in extracting the resources.

“These fields and platforms will pass into the ownership of the Crimean Republic,“ Konstantinov said. We are already guarding them. These are our fields and we will fight for them.”

In 2013 the company Chernomorgazneft extracted 1.65 B cubic meters gas, most of which was in the Black Sea and in the Sea of Azov. According to estimates, the total gas reserves off the Crimean coast are nearly two trillion cubic meters and the oil reserves are around 430 M tons.