Russia’s Novas Energy Services, a developer of technologies for boosting oil and gas production and a resident of the country’s hi-tech hub Skolkovo near Moscow, plans to expand into the U.S. market this year, Skolkovo Fund said on Monday.
“We plan to launch a pilot project in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2012, show efficiency of the technology, record results of an independent expertise and then to employ the product itself,” the fund quoted Novas General Director Nikita Ageyev in its statement as saying.
Novas has held talks with three U.S. oil firms, Ageyev also said, without specifying their names.
“We are discussing now [what company] will be our strategic partner and together we’ll choose wells in which to start work,” he added.
Seen as a key part of Dmitry Medvedev’s drive to modernize Russia’s commodity-dependent economy, Skolkovo is intended to be an ultra-modern science community for the development and commercialization of new technologies.
The hub, set up just outside Moscow, will focus on research in five priority spheres: energy, information technology, communication, biomedical research and nuclear technology.