Russia’s oil reserves enough for more than 100 years

Oil is one of the main symbols of the industrial era, and maybe the whole 20th century. Black gold has gained even more importance in the post-industrial society. People all over the world still fuel their cars with oil and burn mazut to generate heat and electricity. Meanwhile, the ongoing increase of oil consumption makes specialists analyze its remaining reserves on the planet.

Photo: Russia’s oil reserves enough for more than 100 years

In 2003 the International Energy Agency (IEA) prepared a report saying that the petroleum production would decrease by 2030 all over the world save for the countries of the Persian Gulf region. The peak of the global oil mining will be achieved in 2010, according to expert estimates. A research conducted by British Petroleum in 2004 showed that oil reserves in Canada, Vietnam, Great Britain, Norway and the USA would be exhausted in only several years. Russia and Kazakhstan will run out of their oil reserves in ten and 25 years respectively, the research said. About 95 percent of oil reserves in the world would be exhausted during the coming 56 years and the remaining five percent will end in 88 years.

Pessimistic forecasts cannot but raise serious concerns in the world, taking into consideration the fact that Russia’s oil and gas industry are two major constituents of the national economy.

A deeper insight into the problem of oil reserves shows that there are no reasons for panic. Russia’s Ural and Volga regions, Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenetsk autonomous regions, Samara, Orenburg and Perm regions, as well as the republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan will remain Russia’s major oil sources for many years ahead.

The Khanty-Mansiisk region has been playing the most important role in Russia’s oil-mining industry since 1974. In 1980 the region provided the output of over 300 million tons of oil a year. In the 1990s, when the Russian economy collapsed, the oil extraction dropped to 165 million tons a year. Nowadays, the region extracts 276 million tons of oil.

Nowadays, the region acts the key oil-mining subject of the Russian Federation and provides up to 57 percent of the entire output in the country. About 440 oil deposits have been discovered in the region; a half of them have been put into operation. None of other oil-mining regions of the country can be compared with the Khanty-Mansiisk region at this point. Its total oil output reaches approximately 20 billion tons. The currently mined volumes of oil in the region make up almost five percent of the global oil reserves.

Experts say that it will be possible to extract oil in the Khanty-Mansiisk region of Russia at least before the end of the 21^st century. The oil output is said to increase to 308 million tons in 2009.

To put it in a nutshell, the analysis of Russia’s major oil wells shows that Russia will not suffer from the shortage of oil in the nearest future.

Utro

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov
Pravda.ru