Gazprom Neft chief: all oil-producing nations meeting with reduction in quality of reserves, development of technologies needed
MOSCOW. March 28 (Interfax) - The global oil industry is facing declining quality of reserves, competition within itself and with producers of other energy commodities, as well as the climate agenda, Gazprom Neft chief Alexander Dyukov said during a summary board meeting of the Russian Energy Ministry's board.
"Absolutely all oil-producing countries" have been facing the problem of "an objective decline in the quality of reserves" for years, he said.
"We should certainly continue working on creating new technologies to engage both hard-to-recover and unconventional reserves in development, and we should develop methods of increasing oil recovery, methods of chemically boosting oil recovery," the head of the company said.
"And if we're speaking about the availability of technologies, by and large they do not exist in the world, and we need to create these technologies ourselves for new groups of reserves. In this regard, of course, it is necessary to develop cooperation between oil companies, between producers and service companies, producers of field chemistry, legal and tax regimes should be developed for testing these technologies and technological testing grounds created, this work is already in progress. And we need to fine-tune the tax regime, which would stimulate the use of new technologies for tapping of undeveloped reserves," he said.
Head of the State Duma Energy Committee Pavel Zavalny said that new discoveries in the oil industry cover only one fourth of production, which is becoming more complicated and expensive.
"According to an Accounts Chamber estimate, the share of unprofitable reserves today ranges from 31% to 68%, depending on the macroeconomic forecasts applied, that is, about 60% of all current production has some kind of state preferences today. Their own advanced technologies are needed to bring them into development," the Duma deputy said.
"The most important task is to overcome structural constraints with minimal economic losses, maintaining efficiency, the implementation of the import substitution program, primarily in terms of drilling wells to accompany the completion of multistage fracturing (hydraulic fracturing), new technologies of tight reserves development," he said.
Dyukov also backed the importance of developing the institute of equipment certification, testing, standardization and consolidation of industry requests to ensure technological independence, which is necessary both for uninterrupted operation of capacities already established and the continued development of the industry.
He also emphasized the importance of "rebooting the current import substitution management system and the creation of a coordinating council," as well as the importance of working to create independent IT solutions for the oil industry. "And in this regard, with the active participation of the Energy Ministry, work is underway to form a consortium on the basis of an industrial center of IT import substitution competencies," Dyukov said.
The head of Gazprom Neft also spoke in favor of increasing refining depth and producing high-tech products with high added value, which also requires new technologies because they are not available on the market. The company is already working in this direction and there have been some successes, he said.
He expressed confidence that the climate agenda at the moment has lost its relevance, but in the long term, solutions for de-carbonization will be needed, so development and implementation of pilot projects using CCUS technology (carbon capture and storage) and hydrogen production technology should be continued, effective systems for monitoring carbon intensity of production and consumption should be created, and work done to improve energy efficiency.