Peak Oil News & Message Board –This article by Alexei Grigoryev depicts the situation with the new
Russian oilfields being auctioned off to the oil companies and coming
online. It explains why Russian goverments keeps the size of its
petroleum reserves secret, why the Eastern Siberia oilfields will not
save the world from the lack of oil, and why the Eastern Pipeline being
built to supply the countries of East Asia with Russian oil will never
be filled. … The Kommersant lists over 50 oilfields that have
been auctioned off during that period [August 2004 - February 2005].
This list clarifies why President Putin has decreed that the total size
of Russia’s oil reserves shall be the most portentous state secret. The
oilfields being sold by the Ministry of Natural Resources are such puny
weaklings that they make one want to cry.

The largest “giant” on the list is the Chulakan
Oilfield in Evenkia with the probable reserves of C3 category equal to
20.4 mln. tonnes (147 mln. barrels). C3 means that the reserves will
probably be found within the area prepared for drilling. Effectively
this is a pie in the sky: there is no guarantee that the Chulakan
oilfield has so much extractable oil. Or maybe it has even more than
the 20.4 mln. tonnes, depending on how lucky those who bought it are.
To achieve Russia’s 2006 production target of 500 mln. tonnes a year
(10 mln. bpd) one will need to empty about 25 such “Chulakans”annually, provided they contain real, not hypothetical 20.4 mln. tonnes
of extractable oil. …
The director of the Russian Natural Resources Ministry’s department of
natural resource exploitation regulations, Sergei Fedorov, shares the
view that the situation with the depletion of Russia’s oil reserves is
quite sad. “There are very few vacant oilfields left in the state’s oil
fund, 92% of Russia’s oilfields have already been auctioned off. Of the
remaining oilfields the large ones are the one in the Nenets Autonomous
Area (the Trebs-Titov group of oilfields), the Chayandinskoye in
Yakutia, and the oil and gas reservoirs on the sea shelf. The rest are
small oilfields.” The Kommersant concurs: “An elevated interest in the
oil licenses is explained by the fact that less than 10% of the known
oil deposits and less than 20% of the gas deposits belong to the state
fund. The rest have already been auctioned off and the production in
these gas- and oilfields is falling. The depletion rates for Russia’s
principal oil and gas provinces are: 70 to 80% for the North Caucasian
region, 50 to 70% for the Urals-Volga region, and over 45% for the
Western Siberia. As a result, companies compete for the remaining
reserves and boost their auction prices. The Ministry if Natural
Resources is concerned with the resource depletion. In 2004, Russian
companies produced about 900 mln. tonnes of hydrocarbons [about 459
mln. tonnes of oil and 427 mln. tonnes of gas], but increased their
reserves only by appx. 300 mln. tonnes. Even selling all the remaining
hydrocarbon production licenses in 2005 will not compensate for the
depletion because almost no new deposits have been discovered in the
last 10 years. The Ministry now wants to grant licenses for both
exploration and extraction of hydrocarbons, which is allowed by the new
edition of Russia’s Subsoil Law, and this should make the companies
interested in increasing Russia’s mineral resource base.” (06/23/05)
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