Russia needs to provide 27 bln tonnes of cost-effective reference fuel reserves to achieve energy balance by 2050 - State Commission

KAZAN. Sept 1 (Interfax) - Achieving Russia's energy balance by 2050 will require the provision of profitable oil and gas reserves of 27 billion tonnes of standard fuel. This assessment was presented by the head of the State Commission for Mineral Reserves Igor Shpurov during the Tatarstan Petrochemical Forum.

Of the total volume, about 4 billion tonnes of profitable oil reserves and 11 tcm of gas reserves can be provided through geological exploration, and the remaining 7 billion tonnes of oil (cat. AB1C1) and 5 tcm of gas (cat. AB1C1) will require progress in the development of hard-to-recover reserves.

"Will we be able to do it? If we can find or create technologies that will allow us to increase oil recovery (oil recovery factor, or ORF) up to 0.32 based on the identified volumes of hard-to-recover reserves, and this is now approximately the average indicator of the state balance [0.34 according to the state balance sheet], then we will be able to increase reserves by an additional 18.4 billion tonnes due to this alone. And, it is actually a completely different state balance sheet if we consider industrial categories," Shpurov said.

According to the presentation, the State Commission's analysis included remote reserves, low-permeability reservoirs, the Tyumen suite, sub-gas zones, Achimov deposits, shelves, Bazhen, Domanik and Khadum suites, the Vikulov suite, the Vasyugan suite, ultra-high-viscosity oils and the Abalak suite.

Additionally, the current share of hard-to-recover reserves in Russia's annual oil production is 37%, or 166 million tonnes, the presentation says.