Assessment of Oil-Gas Potential of Eastern Russia Offshore

Internet Geology News Letter No, 12, September 27, 1999

No discoveries have as yet been made on the Eastern Arctic Shelf (Laptev and East Siberian Seas). Density of hydrocarbon resources have been assessed, however, at 2.4-3.8 million barrels oil equivalent per square kilometer for the prospective plays. Oil will probably account for more than 60 percent of the total resources. Bituminous source beds of the Domanik type (See News Letter No. 3) should be present extensively in the Devonian and Triassic sections in the east of The Arctic Shelf and in Vendian (Proterozoic) and Devonian of the Laptev Sea. Eleven plays are recognized on the Northeast Sakhalin Shelf, each of which is host to 2-4 highs that have been mapped by seismic surveys. Total assessed resources of these plays exceeds 7.7 BBOE (Billion barrels oil equivalent). The Magadan-West Kamchatka basin is assessed to contain 41 percent of the initial total resources of the Sea of Okhotsk region. (This includes the TINRO basin, mentioned in News Letter No. 3.) Some forty plays are recognized. Those to the north and west are expected to be oil-prone, and those to the east and southeast - gas-condensate- and gas-prone. Gas pools with high-paraffin oil rings are expected in the Anadyr basin, and oil pools with gas caps in the Khatyrka basin. The above material is taken from Petroleum Geology, vol. 34, no. 1, p. 47, 2000 (in press). Published assessed oil and gas resources of the Eastern Russian Offshore vary over a wide range. David Wilson (Oil and Gas Journal, July 19, 1999) cites undiscovered resources at 780 million tons (5.5 BBOE) in the Sea of Okhotsk and 2.03 billion tons (14 BBOE) in other sectors of the Arctic Shelf. Condensate resources are placed at 150 and 650 million tons (1.05 and 4.55 BBOE, respectively). Gas resources are placed at 3.84 trillion cu m (134 tcf) in the Sea of Okhotsk and 2.64 cu m (92.4 tcf) in other areas of the shelf. Some extremely hgih assessed figures for the Sea of Okhotsk and Pacific Rim basins are given by Varnavskiy (1994). Although these numbers are controversial, I present them for you the reader to make your own judgement. They are as follows by basin. Billion tons BBOE Isikari- West Sakhalin 33 (231 BBOE) Okhotsk-West Kamchatka more than 56 (392 BBOE) Sakhalin-Okhotsk up to 46 (322 BBOE) South Okhotsk up to 21 (147 BBOE) Anadyr 15 (105 BBOE) Navarin up to 20 (140 BBOE) Aleutian up to 56 (392 BBOE) Olyutor-Komandor 18 (126 BBOE) Bolinin and others (Petroleum Geology, vol. 34, no. 1, 2000) emphasize that at present price levels active production of the Eastern Russian Offshore hydrocarbon resources will be delayed until the second half of the 21th Century. Copyright 1999 James Clarke. You are encouraged to print out this and other issues of this News Letter and to forward them to others.