The share of hard-to-recover oil in Russia’s reserves has reached 65% of the total volume, according to a draft 2030 strategy for development of the country’s mineral resource base released by the Federal Mineral Resources Agency.
The total amount of oil in place under the A, B and C1 categories in Russia exceeds 18 billion tons, but about 12 billion tons of them are hard-to-recover oil, and the latter’s share is increasing as companies mainly produce easy-to-recover oil.
Russia produces about 500 million tons of oil per year excluding condensate, so the reserves-to-production ratio of acting fields is 35-36 years, but the ratio excluding hard-to-recover oil is no more than 20 years, the strategy read.
Given the current state of the country’s mineral resource base, it will be impossible to maintain the output level after 2020 without development of hard-to-recover oil reserves, the agency said in the strategy. (Prime/Business World Magazine)
