The Soviet Union has accelerated efforts to seek foreign participation in exploration/production joint ventures.
Moscow has offered another 11 areas in five regions for E&P joint venture consideration under a second round. The areas encompass 21 fields and three exploratory areas.
Further, the Soviets are offering vast stretches of the country to review by foreign oil companies for the companies to propose their own joint venture programs. The 12 areas on offer for joint venture review stretch from the western Siberian basin to the Black Sea and cover a total area about the size of the U.S.
The offerings were detailed in Houston late last month and in London last week by MDSeis, a joint, venture of Professional Geophysics Inc. (PGI), Houston, and the Soviet Central Geophysical Expedition of the Ministry of Oil & Gas Industry (CGE). They include new opportunities for E&P in the western Siberian basin, Volga-Urals, North Caucasus, and Ukraine areas.
Another data package covering a proposed E&P joint venture in the Black Sea was offered last month by a joint venture of PGI and the Soviet Ministry of Geology.
Meantime, a joint venture of Fairfield Industries Inc., Houston, and the Yakut-Sakha Soviet Socialist Republic is offering a data package covering a 4,100 sq km portion of the Chayadin-Botouba region in southwestern Yakut S.S.S.R.
Fairfield says the offering, reviewed in Houston late last month, will be followed the next 2 years by 16 more offerings of much larger areas, designated by the republic as available to joint venture development with non-Soviet partners. Fairfield said its joint venture with Yakut S.S.S.R. is the first between a western company and a sovereign Soviet republic.
MDSEIS OFFERING
PGI estimated the identified oil reserves covered by the Round 2 offering at 2 billion bbl. That brings total reserves covered by offerings through MDSeis to 10 billion bbl, PGI said.
MDSeis earlier this year offered four information packages and reviews of joint venture opportunities in four areas in the western Siberian basin and one in the Volga Urals region (OGJ, Mar. 19, p. 15).
The latest MDSeis packages cover proposed joint ventures in western Siberia, Tataria, Kuybyshev, Stavropol, and the Ukraine.
Data included in the package are production logs, drilling reports, cross sections, structural isopachs, and seismic data.
Tom Russell, PGI president, said MDSeis is offering prospects that will appeal to a wide range of companies.
MDSeis said the biggest potential in the latest offering lies in areas surrounding Varyegan, North Varyegan, and Nova-Agan fields in western Siberia. Dominated by middle Cretaceous sand and shale sequences and Jurassic intervals, the three fields have about 1.45 billion bbl of original oil in place.
Cretaceous and Jurassic prospects also show the most promise in East Pridorozhny and Ikilor field areas, in the central western Siberian basin, where all development activity will be offered for joint venture proposals.
Joint venture prospects also are on offer in the Komsomol field area in the north central part of the western Siberia basin, where thick shale beds interlay three series of more than 30 oil and gas reservoirs.
Twenty-five wells have produced less than 600,000 bbl of oil from seven fields in Tataria areas proposed for joint ventures. MDSeis said data indicate a resource potential of about 1.75 billion bbl of original oil in place, mainly in middle and lower Carboniferous and Upper Devonian formations.
Joint venture areas in Tataria include Aksubaev-Mokshin, Staro-Kadeev, Kutush, Enoruskin, Melnikov, Cheremuha, and Kiyazli, near the Druzhba pipeline system and west of the city of Almetyevsk and Romashkino oil field.
Six small fields in Kuybyshev Oblast-Bulatov, Kazakov, Cherno-Ozersky, Erkul, Smorodin, and Yuganskalso are on offer for joint ventures. Situated about 100 km north of Kuybyshev city, on Bulatov high on the southeast flank of the Melekess depression, the fields produce from Devonian carbonate.
MDSeis is offering three joint venture opportunities in Stavropol.
Exploratory drilling in Stavropol's Soviet-Mozdok area, on the north flank of the western end of the Tersko-Caspian foredeep, has yielded two fields since 1951. A commercial oil reservoir was discovered in Upper Cretaceous chalky limestone, and two Lower Cretaceous formations are prospects. Other Stavropol prospects are in the Maryinsk-Chegen and Yuravsk-Arkhangelsk areas.
Two oil fields in the Ukraine are included in the second MDSeis offering. Dolina and North Dolina fields, near the Polish-Czech borders in Dolinsk and Bolekhov districts of the Ivano-Frankov region, are in a mature province with an extensive infrastructure that includes pipelines, refineries, and gas processing plants.
Dolina field is in a late stage of development, with water cuts of 70-80% in production from Paleocene Menilite and Manyavsk reservoirs. Recovery is not expected to exceed 15% in Menilite and 27% in Manyavsk reservoirs. Recovery rates from Menilite and Eocene reservoirs in North Dolina field are estimated at 8% and 29%, respectively.
FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES
MDSeis said future data offerings covered under area-wide review will include seismic data, well logs, and cross sections related to prospects in the southern and central zones of western Siberia, Volga-Urals, Saratov, precaspian, Volgograd, North Caucasus, and Mangishlak regions.
Data from the Pripyat depression, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Tadzik also will be offered, About 40,000 line km of seismic data will be included.
Using Soviet data offered by MDSeis last spring, nine major oil companies and six independents are negotiating joint ventures in Krasnoleninsk, Varyegan, Bakhilovsk, and the Russian hydrocarbon pool north of the Arctic Circle, PGI's Russell said.
BLACK SEA OFFERING
Systemco-a joint venture of PGI and the Soviet Ministry of Geology, PGI, and Yuzhmorgeologiya of the Ministry of Geology-are offering a data package covering the Black Sea continental shelf.
Only 40 wells have been drilled in the Black Sea, which has a continental shelf as large as the Gulf of Mexico's.
The package includes 30,000 line km of regional and Russian Economic Zone seismic data, including 2,70 line km integrated with a geologic study of the Black Sea region.
YAKUT AUTONOMY
On Sept. 27, the Supreme Soviet of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Republic proclaimed the republic's sovereignty as an independent socialist state, approving the name change.
Yakut leaders said the republic will act independently to establish economic enterprises with foreign entities to develop natural resources within its territory.
Effective Nov. 1, Moscow set an exchange rate of 1.8 rubles for $1 U.S. and established a series of new investment laws to protect property and profits of Soviet and foreign investors.
The new rules allow regional officials to establish ventures with foreign partners in joint enterprise zones within their jurisdictions.
YAKUT OFFERING
Two structures known to contain oil and gas are within the first Yakut area opened to foreign companies for joint venture exploration and development.
Chayandinskaya field, still under appraisal, contains seven pre-Cambrian and Lower Cambrian horizons with structural and stratigraphic traps. Chayandinskaya's sedimentary section is 2,000 m thick, Yakut officials said.
Illeginskay, an untested structure included in the first area, is analogous to Chayandinskaya field and to Srednebotuobinskaya, a producing field 6 miles northeast of the joint venture area.
Oil and gas have been found in four of Yakut's nine tectonic regions, which cover an area of 1.4 million sq km, nearly half the republic's 3.2 million sq km. Fifteen of 23 fields discovered in Yakut to date are along the Nepa-Botuoba anticline that adjoins the joint venture area.
The U.S. Geological Survey estimates Yakut's undiscovered potential resource at 2.2-14.6 billion bbl of oil and 72-278 tcf of gas.
Yakut officials are allowing review of data in the initial package until February 1991 and site visits the following March and April. Prospective joint venture partners will be required to submit offers by May 6, 1991, and Yakut officials will announce winning proposals in June.
LITTLE EXPLORED
Fairfield Vice Pres. Marc Lawrence said eastern Siberia remains virtually untouched, compared with the Soviet Union's better known oil and gas regions.
Yakut S.S.S.R. is about five times the size of Texas.
Lawrence said Yakut-Sakha officials picked the area for the first offering because of its subsurface structure and nearness to a producing field.
The 17 areas to be offered for joint ventures contain a wide range of traps, including salt structures, fault related structures, anticlines, and folding, Lawrence said.
More than half of western Yakut will be offered, stretching from the republic's southern border to the Laptev Sea north of the Arctic Circle. Two large areas in eastern Yakut also will be offered.
One promising future offering, Lawrence said, is a large, untested anticlinal structure south of the Lena River delta in the Lena-Anabarskay joint venture area.
Lawrence estimated the Lena River delta, on the Laptev Sea, is about four times the size of the Mississippi River delta.
"But unlike the Mississippi, there is not a well drilled in that delta and not a seismic line shot," he said.
"Considering the vastness of Yakut-Sakha, the lack of exploration, and structures and source rocks indicated by geological maps, the potential seems enormous. We know a huge granitic intrusion isn't covering millions of square miles."
Copyright 1990 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
