Russian gas production could fall by half by 2040 without tapping hard-to-recover, offshore reserves - commission
MOSCOW. May 23 (Interfax) - Accessible gas reserves in Russia are being depleted and if hard-to-recover reserves, including offshore, are not developed gas production in the country could tumble by almost half by 2040, the head of hydrocarbon analysis and monitoring at the State Commission for Mineral Reserves (GKZ), Oleg Fedoseyev said in a presentation at the 21st international conference Russian and CIS Shelf Development-2025.
The gas reserves of fields that are now being developed in Russia will last 54 years, he said. "Going forward we need to engage fields not being developed, hard-to-recover reserves and the shelf. In future we need to bring 11 trillion cubic meters of gas into development, half of which should be profitable," Fedoseyev said.
He recalled that conventional reserves in the Nadym-Put-Tax region in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District are now almost 75% depleted.
"We believe the share of hard-to-recover reserves in current reserves is 54%, of which 23% is the shelf, which requires very large amounts of investment in development of technologies, mastering extraction. In order to support production in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District and feed gas into the [Unified Gas Supply System] it is necessary to further explore unconventional reservoirs - Achimov, Tyumen, pre-Jurassic. The share of low-pressure gas will grow more and more in Cenomanian [reservoirs]. We have such a joint project with the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District to engage these hard-to-recover reserves," Fedoseyev said.
He also recalled that Russia has mineral extraction tax (MET) breaks for gas produced from fields that are more than 70% depleted, deposits at depths of more than 1,700 meters, fields on the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas and for the Tulonsky and Berezovsky suites. The maximum tax break, 100%, is applied to the continental shelf, gas for LNG projects and gas for injection info formations to maintain pressure.
"Accessible reserves are running out, we will be forced to engage hard-to-recover reserves or go out on the shelf, into the Arctic zone. But for this we need to stimulate exploration, create new incentives for developing unconventional reserves in Arctic regions," Fedoseyev said.
"We believe that the priority task for this should be to conduct an inventory of reserves in order to understand how much gas reserves we have, what amounts [of production] are needed taking into account the balance of consumption - how much can be sold for export, how much to direct to domestic consumption considering that the gasification of the country is actively underway," Fedoseyev said.
