The State Commission estimated Russian oil and gas reserves

Russia’s proven oil reserves will last for 39 years, gas – for 80 years, coal – for an even longer period, said Igor Shpurov, head of the State Commission for Mineral Reserves, in an article for the InfoTEK analytical center. However, profitable oil reserves, according to him, are significantly less.

Shpurov explained that, according to the results of the inventory of oil reserves, only 65% ​​were recognized as profitable for production – they can be put into operation fairly quickly. For the extraction of the rest, according to Shpurov, “new technologies, special tax regimes, preliminary development of deposits, etc.” are needed. The share of profitable coal and gas reserves is not yet clear, because an inventory has not yet been carried out, Shpurov added (he did not give absolute figures).

Previously, officials at various levels also provided data on the provision of Russia with minerals. In particular, in the summer of 2021, in an interview RBC Alexander Kozlov, head of the Ministry of Natural Resources, argued that at the current level of production in the Russian Federation, oil would last for 59 years, natural gas – 103 years.

According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, as of January 2021, oil reserves in Russia (categories A + B₁ + C₁) amounted to 19 billion tons, gas condensate – 2.2 billion tons, gas – 47.7 trillion cubic meters. m, coal – 196.6 billion tons.

In May of this year, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that by the end of 2021, oil production in Russia amounted to 524 million tons (an increase of 2.2% compared to 2020). According to the Ministry of Energy, 762.8 billion cubic meters were produced last year. m of gas (+10% by 2020), coal production, according to the Central Dispatch Office of the Fuel and Energy Complex, amounted to 438.4 million tons (+9% by 2020).

Dmitry Koptev, an expert at the Institute for the Development of Technologies in the Fuel and Energy Complex, notes that since the 1960s, there has been a steady trend towards the depletion of traditional deposits and the growth of so-called hard-to-recover reserves (TRIZ), including those located on the shelf in the Arctic zone. “In the documents of relevant departments, this is noted as one of the most serious risk factors for the Russian oil and gas industry,” he said. Oil and gas HRDs are characterized by unfavorable geological and climatic conditions for production and the properties of the hydrocarbons themselves (for example, oil with high density, viscosity and high content of solid paraffins and resins). This, in particular, is the oil of the Bazhenov, Abalak, Khadum, Domanik and Tyumen suites, says Alexander Potavin, an analyst at FG Finam.

According to Koptev, the growth in the share of TRIZ has slowed down recently and, according to VNIIneft’s calculations, is about 1% per year. Experts give different estimates of the current share of TRIZ in the total reserves. Koptev estimates the share of hard-to-recover oil at 33% of the total reserves, Potavin at 65%. In production, according to Koptev, the share of TRIZ is about 8%. “Estimates of the share of hard-to-recover oil reserves depend on what is meant by TRIZ in each specific case. I mean oil in low-permeability reservoirs (primarily the reserves of the Bazhenov formation), sediments, fields with a high degree of depletion, as well as ultra-viscous oil,” Koptev explained.

New technologies should increase the oil recovery factor, thereby increasing the efficiency of the development of TRIZ, Shpurov believes. And he recalls that the state stimulates this direction, including tax incentives. In 2022, several companies have already received licenses to create such test sites and are organizing them in areas with hard-to-recover natural resources.

According to senior analyst Alfa Bank Nikita Blokhin, almost all licenses for the creation of landfills are now held by large state-owned companies (Gazprom, Rosneft and Tatneft). “In order to expand the capabilities of the technological testing ground, the state also needs to actively attract small private companies and develop a legal framework for changing tax laws,” he said. The expert also recalled that the State Reserves Commission at a meeting in May 2022 decided that it was necessary to introduce the TRIZ classification and clarify the parameters for classifying deposits in this category. Such a classification with the calculation and introduction of extraction difficulty coefficients is necessary, according to him, in order to formalize tax incentives for the development of this segment of oil production.

Experts found it difficult to assess the growth in the cost of oil during the development of TRIZ. According to Potavin, the average unit cost of extracting oil from the deposits of the Bazhenov formation located in Western Siberia is about 2.2 times higher than the cost of developing conventional oil wells. “But as it spreads, new technologies quickly become cheaper,” adds Koptev. – For example, in the United States, by the beginning of the “shale revolution”, the price of oil production fell from $100/bbl. up to $40/bbl.

Shpurov noted that about 20% of the country’s oil is produced using technologies that, due to anti-Russian sanctions, are now “poorly available to Russian companies”, oil and gas service companies are most dependent on imports. “Now Russian companies will have to develop their own expertise,” adds Blokhin. Such work is already underway. In particular, as Koptev recalled, “field tests” of the first domestic fleet are underway to implement the technology of hydraulic fracturing, which was built by “Gazprom Neft“. Potavin adds that it will be most difficult to replace such high-tech segments as intelligent well completion systems, systems for rotary steerable drilling and others, where previously the share of imported equipment was more than 80%.