Russian reserves commission concerned by increased divergence of production levels from initially approved figures in development of hydrocarbons deposits

MOSCOW. Feb 16 (Interfax) - The number of hydrocarbon field development projects submitted for state expert review in 2022 has dropped, of particular concern is the increasing deviation of oil companies from the approved production levels in field development projects, State Commission for Mineral Reserves chief Igor Shpurov said at a conference titled "Topical issues of expert review of geological and recoverable hydrocarbon reserves" in Moscow on Wednesday.

"As for the volume of expert review, through 2021 there was fairly serious growth in this indicator due to various factors. In particular, because Russia was undergoing a transition period for new classification of hydrocarbon reserves. But in 2022, volume fell by 1,035, down 15.6% compared to the previous year. This is for all minerals, but the key share here is - hydrocarbons. For hydrocarbons, the decrease in the number of expert reviews compared to the previous year was 23.4%," he said.

The main decrease in the volume of expert review was due to the entry into force of government decree N353 from March 12, 2022, which allows for deviation from the volume of production approved in projects without provision of a new project, Shpurov said.

"It would seem that this should have significantly reduced administrative barriers, to help companies overcome those negative trends with transportation and oil sales, due to which they have to reduce production due to logistics violations. But in fact, things didn't go quite as planned," the commission chief said.

"When it comes to gas, a small percentage of notifications are presented. Which can't be said about oil. For oil, in addition to notifications of underproduction related to the violation of supply chains, a number of notifications of oil overproduction with a decrease in the stock of operating wells have been recorded. We hope that the situation will be altered by amendments to government decree 353, which prohibits production overruns without an increase in the well stock. This will allow us to avoid the risk of selective depletion of oil reserves," Shpurov said.