Russia’s No.2 crude producer, LUKOIL, signed an agreement to join a project offshore Vietnam, LUKOIL said on Friday.

LUKOIL has been actively acquiring foreign upstream assets, banking on overseas’ oil production growth as its western Siberian deposits are getting increasingly depleted.

It said that LUKOIL Overseas, a wholly-owned subsidiary of LUKOIL, acquired from Quad Energy S.A., a private petroleum company, a 50 percent interest in the Production Sharing Agreement for the Hanoi Trough-02 (HT-02) offshore block.

“Exploration on the block has continued since 2007 and by now has resulted in identification of a number of prospects with their aggregate in-place resources exceeding 180 million tons of reference fuel. Drilling of three exploration wells is planned on the block in 2011,” the company said in a statement.