The “CRAB” seabed stations form part of a joint project between Gazprom Neft, the Ministry of Trade and Industry of the Russian Federation, JSC Marine Arctic Geological Exploration, and the International Tomography Centre (ITC SB RAS). The CRAB seabed station is a mobile hardware and software appliance for marine seismic surveying and monitoring, used in transit zones and offshore. Built from four-component autonomous seabed stations, serviced through the station’s container-laboratories, the CRAB station is designed for local seismic surveys and exploration at offshore hydrocarbon fields.

The Ayashsky license block in the Sea of Okhotsk is located 55 kilometres offshore from Sakhalin Island, in the north—east of the island’s continental shelf, where sea depths can reach up to 90 metres. The Neptune field (with reserves in place of 415 million tonnes (mt) of oil) was discovered in 2017, and the Triton field (with reserves in place of 137 mt) in 2018.

Gazpromneft Sakhalin is a subsidiary of Gazprom Neft. The company is primarily engaged in the exploration and development of offshore oil and gas fields. The company is operator of the Dolginskoye oil field, at which geological prospecting works are currently ongoing, as well as the North-West block of the Pechora Sea, the Kheisovsky block in the Barents Sea, the Severo-Vrangelevsky block, covering the East-Siberian and Chukhchi Seas, and the Ayashsky block in the Sea of Okhotsk.