OGPSS - The oil in the Western Siberian Basin

Time marches on, and as I noted in an earlier post, the declining fortunes of the Romashkino and other oilfields in the Volga-Urals Basin led into the development of the fields of Western Siberia, where even today, some 40-years after it was discovered, just over 60% of Russian crude is still being produced.

Russian production in 2009, broken down by region (the total is 10.48 mbd) (EIA)

Back in 2007 production was at 70% of total Russian crude oil production, with a daily production of 7 mbd so that there already changes in the mix occurring. At its peak, in 1980, Samotlor, the largest field in the region, was producing at 3.4 mbd, out of a Soviet production of 12.5 mbd. Samotlor is thus ranked 7th in the world in terms of original oil reserves, and, as a comment on the times, while production has fallen to 750 kbd, it still ranks 6th in the world in terms of daily production. Initial reserves stood at 27 billion barrels of oil, though this was not initially evident, when the field was discovered in 1965. Water cut has increasingly taken its toll of the field, and now runs at around 90%.

Gas Flare over Samotlor in the marshes of West Siberia (Geotimes)

It took some persuasion to get the Soviet oil industry to move that far East. The new fields were some 600 miles further East than those of the Western Urals, and the country was divided between taiga and swamp. There weren’t a whole lot of people, either.

The different regions of Russian oil production (Petroneft)

Much of that has changed, with the center of the oil industry now located in and around Khanty-Mansiysk, a settlement since 1637, but mainly built after 1931 when it became the capital of the Ostyako-Vogulsky National Okrug. It was given its current name in 1940, and became a city in 1950. As a sign of the changing times, the provincial budget from oil revenues was $4.5 billion in 2008.

Oil seeps had been reported in the outcropping of rocks along the Ob River since the seventeeth century, and I.M. Gubkin, the founder of petroleum geology in the Soviet Union, had predicted the presence of oil as early as 1932. Serious exploration began in 1954. In 1962 a well drilled near Tazovsky produced natural gas at a flow rate of a million cu m (35 mcf) a day and the Tazovskoye oil and gas field had been found. Originally it was developed as an oil field, but more recently its natural gas potential has been more fully recognized as has that of the entire Yamal Peninsula. (And in the same time that 70% of Soviet oil was coming from Western Siberia, so was 90% of their natural gas.)

The oil and gas fields of Western Siberia (after Grace – Russian Oil Supply)

Tazovsky by Vghik (Google Earth)

The northern part of the West Siberian Basin (which, as Grace points out, covers an area about four times the size of France) has been where the most recent exploration has taken place, but was further south, and east along the Ob River that the first three major fields Fedorovskoye and Mamontovskoye near Surgut, and Samotlor which lay further East near Nizhnevartosk, were found between 1963 and 1965. An oil pipeline was laid in 1967, allowing year-round production. From the beginning construction and development was a problem, given the local geography and ways had to be found of getting production equipment into the marshy ground and getting the oil and gas out. For many years the Ob river was the main highway.

These three fields underpinned Soviet oil production through the 1980’s, and with the 14 fields that were added in the second generation, the 7 that came on line for the third, and the 8 that made up the fourth generation, they kept the Soviet Union well supplied until its collapse at the end of 1991.

Crude Oil Production from Western Siberia (Grace – Russian Oil Supply)

Over the past decade these fields have been rehabilitated and raised production by more than 60% over that at the depths of the crash, after the dissolution of the Union.

Fedorovskoye is run by Surgetneftegas, a company that drilled 1,403 wells in 2011, including 708,000 ft of exploration. In 1993 the company was allowed to become an open joint stock company. The field, which peaked at a production of around 1 mbd in 1983, is now referred to as the Fedorovsko-Surgutskoye and with a current production of 400 kbd it ranks 14th largest in the world. As a sign of the times, perhaps, the new fields that Surgetneftefas are developing are, however, in Eastern Siberia.

Mamonskoye is run by Yuganskneftegaz and was acquired by Rosneft in 2005. It too peaked at around 1 mbd, though in 1986. The company estimates that in the Khanty-Mansiysk region its 30 license areas still retain a reserve:annual production ratio of 24 years.

This includes the Northern part of the Priobskoye field, the “Pearl of West Siberia,” discovered in 1982, and brought on line in 1989, and the Prirazlomnoye field which is the Russian offshore (a third future topic). The Priobskoye field was producing at 650 kbd in 2009, when it was ranked as the 8th largest producer, with plans to further increase production through 2013.

Fields around Khanty-Mansiisk, including Priobskoye (JPT)


The Southern part of the Priobskoye field is being run by Gazprom Neft the oil branch of the Russian gas company. In 2007 Rosneft produced an average 550 kbd from the Northern half of the field, while Gazprom was producing 127 kbd. Gazprom has about 40% of the field. Production has been helped in more recent times with the use of Schlumberger’s advanced down-hole motors and technology.

Down-hole motors used at Priobskoye.

Also in the region, and similarly just coming on line are the wells of the Salym Project, which, last Sept 25th reached a production record for them of 177 kbd. The oilfields include West Salym (reserves estimated at 630 million barrels; Upper Salym (reserves estimated at 150 mb) and Vadelyp also at 150 mb.

One of the problems of sustaining production, even given this wealth of opportunity, lies in the need for considerable investment to make it happen.

Coburn(pdf) has pointed out that only 60% of the investment needed in 2009 to sustain the industry was forthcoming, and suggests that the $110 billion needed for exploration and development before 2016, and most of this will have to be spent further East in Siberia and Sakhalin (which will be visited in future posts). He further notes that Lukoil have suggested that $1 trillion will be required to sustain production at current levels. This will include a further production from Western Siberia to the tune of 45.5 billion barrels. Given that most of the larger, older fields are showing depletion levels of 70% or so this is going to have to come from developing a larger number of smaller fields. But that will take an investment that is still doubtful, though Lukoil are investing some $24 billion in downstream operations, showing that they are anticipating getting the oil from somewhere.

Given the size of the Basin, I have not spent enough time today on natural gas too much of which is still flared, so I will return to the region again.

OGPSS - Oil and Natural Gas in the Volga-Ural Basin

In the last post on the oil and gas fields of the Northern Caucasus, I commented that one of the reasons that these older oil and gas fields were being further developed was due to the introduction of advanced Western techniques. As John Grace points out in “Russian Oil Supply” another reason that there are fields left to develop is due to the philosophy by which the Soviet government marshaled resources to keep the Union supplied with oil for domestic and export use. Because of its centralized nature, as the resources in one region declined, so the financial support and technical equipment were removed and taken to other parts of the country, where a more plentiful supply source was available. This frequently left smaller fields behind, and removed the incentive for further exploration in the older regions.

The first region to see that removal of support was around Baku, and then the North Caucasus, as more plentiful resources became evident up in the region around Almetyevsk, in what is now the Republic of Tatarstan. The region lies considerably north of Volvograd (Stalingrad) and further east, though it still lies on the banks of the Volga, though also just to the West of the Ural Mountains, and thus the more popular and general description is the Volga-Ural Basin.

Relative location of Almetyevsk, showing the Volga (black line) Stalingrad (now Volvograd), and the Caspian. (Google Earth)

The Volga-Urals Basin is now recognized to be extensive with the USGS estimating that there remain some 1.5 billion barrels of oil, and 2.3 Tcf of natural gas (at the mean) left to be discovered and produced.

Extent of the Volga-Ural Basin (USGS )

Prior to the Second World War, the region saw little development. Tar pits within the Basin had indicated the presence of oil, and Grace has pointed to outhouses exploding around the town of Orenburg, as natural gas from the underlying field collected in the buildings, as the first indicator of the presence of that field. But the fields all appeared to be small, and with enough production from Baku and Grozny to meet existing needs, there was little initial incentive to develop what seemed to be a series of small shallow fields.

Oilfields of the Volga-Ural Basin (Russian Oil Supply)

With the German advances into the Caucasus, that oil became lost or more difficult to bring north, and the relative security of the Volga-Urals meant that a greater effort was made to bring those fields on line. Production had reached 55 kbd in this “second Baku” by the end of the war. The first break had come with the discovery of the relatively shallow oil field at Tuymazinskoye in 1937, but it was not until they deepened one of the wells into the lower Devonian layers in 1944 that they hit the more productive reservoirs and the potential of the region became evident. In 1943 a test well had been sunk at Shugurovo and flowed at 140 bd from a reservoir at 2,000 ft. With the knowledge of the deeper reservoirs a third well in the region, near the town of Romashkino was drilled down to 6,463 ft, penetrating the casing on July 10, 1948. Because of formation damage the well was slow to produce, but within a short while was up to 876 bd. Holding 17 billion barrels of oil, and thus the largest oil reservoir discovered at the time, the Romashkino field (which included the well at Shugarovo) had been tapped. In time another seven fields, each of more than a billion barrels, were added to the inventory for the Basin.

The deeper Devonian beds required a number of innovations to produce at the levels that Moscow was requiring. The first of these was the development of the down-hole turbo drill. Russian steel making was not on a par with that available in the West, and the torque requirements for drilling the harder and deeper rocks were a challenge, overcome by putting the turning motor at the bottom of the well. The second problem that arose was in maintaining well pressure as the oil was removed. The use of contour water flooding evolved from the initial Master Plan in 1956 and was successively modified to perimeter flooding, so that by 1960 the basin was producing at 2.9 mbd, comfortably exceeding the target 1.2 mbd. Romashkino itself peaked at just under 1.6 mbd in 1968 and began to decline in production in 1976. As production declined, so the water cut also rose and by 1993 production was down to around 300 kbd, with about 85% water cut.

Production of oil from Romashkino (Russian Oil Supply)

Overall production from the Volga-Urals Basin includes some of the fields that lie outside of Tatarstan, as a result the decline of the Basin was a little later than that of the main field within it. For example further to the East lies the Arlan field in Bashkortostan, run by Bashneft. That too, however, is now in decline. In its 50-year life it has produced, with the Shkapovo field, over 4.7 billion barrels of oil. The overall basin produced from over 800 discrete fields.

Production history of the fields of the Volga Ural Basin (IHS via Dave Cohen )

More recently the EIA reported that the Volga-Urals Basin produced 2.03 mbd in 2009, while the Northern Causasus produced some 800 kbd.

Romashkino lies in Tatarstan, and the Tatneft Company had been formed to develop the oil in the Republic, of which some 6.3 billion barrels was in reserve. Realizing that their geography precluded independence, they became an associate subject of the Russian Federation, and Tatneft was privatized. Through helpful arrangements with the local government production, which had declined through lack of investment, was brought back to 465 kbd for the region, and has held at that level, through the collapse of the ruble. As the economy was restored the company began to expand, and has helped, for example, Kalmykia to develop their resources. (The Caspian oilfields that are now being developed lie off shore Kalmykia).

With over 15 billion barrels now produced from Romashkino more advanced techniques are being used to improve recovery of the remaining oil. These include the use of carbon dioxide injection, which has improved some production by as much as 12%.

Because Volga Urals oil has a high sulfur content (around 2.5%) this has, in the past, led to it being blended with West Siberian oil prior to refining. As the resource has declined the oil that is left is increasingly heavy, merging into the Melekess oil sands.

(Russia in total is estimated to have around 246 billion barrels of bitumen in sand formations, though most of it is in Eastern Siberia). The USGS has estimated that, at present, some 13.4 billion barrels of the Melekess oil is technically recoverable. Working with MicroPro GMBH
the bacteria Clostridiae has been tested as a means of improving production.

Improved flow conditions in the reservoir and increased gas/oil ratios led to an enhanced net oil production by 50% to 65% without changing production regime. The water content of the entire field was reduced from 74% to 57%. Between 1992 and 1995 the MEOR treatment resulted in an additional MEOR oil production of 4,200 ton (26,400 bbl)

Whether the small fields that remain in the Volga Ural Basin will be developed in the short term (as they likely would be by small independents were they in the West) appears to be currently less likely as both Tatneft and Bashneft see better returns by investing outside the region than within it. They are also reputed, by Grace, to retain a lot of Soviet-era infrastructure and thinking within the companies, which may also reduce the effort to invest in the smaller fields. It is difficult, therefore, to see the region have much increase in production from current levels, but rather it may continue a decline into the future.

In regard to natural gas, down by the border with Kazakhstan lie the natural gas deposits of the Orenburg field (of exploding outhouse fame). Production began in 1974, reaching a steady state of production in 1979, holding a 48 bcm production per year until 1984. In order to maintain pressure water flooding was used, and its influence on the production of a typical well can be seen below. Overall production has since fallen to 18 bcm per year.

The use of water pressure to sustain production from a well in the Orenburg field (Ivanov)

More recently the field has changed to the use of initially horizontal wells, and then, since 2009, the use of multi-laterals in order to sustain production and increase reserves, still considered to be around 280 bcm of natural gas (9 Tcf). This is a little more than the EIA estimate. However, given the increasing cost of developing this, when set against the much larger volumes that can be found in other parts of Russia (not to mention Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to the south) it is reasonable to assume that the region will continue to decline in natural gas production also.