Russians to seek exploration in difficult Far East basins

Where Far East Russia Seismicc Data are Available (Fig. 1 [244,039 bytes])

Local governments and associations in Russia hope to encourage exploration interest in lightly explored, mostly nonproducing offshore basins in the Far East.

Adjacent onshore areas have experienced recurring shortages of natural gas and petroleum products.

Russian authorities have been attempting to license blocks in far eastern waters for much of the 1990s, but political, bureaucratic, fiscal, and tax uncertainties have frustrated most efforts (see map, OGJ, May 10, 1993, p. 21).

Decisions regarding RFE offshore tender offerings are being made, said Wavetech Geophysical Inc., Denver. Approval of the Russian Parliament is needed for tender offers, and no one can predict when such approvals might be forthcoming.

Dalwave, a joint venture of Trust Dalmorneftegeophyzika and Wavetech, is offering a package of more than 40,000 km of 24-48 fold regional 2D seismic data on nearly 400 lines in the Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea.

The package is being made available to give geoscientists a head start at regional evaluation outside the Sakhalin Island area. The data, not offered for sale before, originated from 10-15 surveys conducted in the 1980s and early 1990s.

RFE resources

Most literature attributes relatively low resource estimates to the Russian Far East, but it also is clear that the area is extremely large and only sparsely explored.

Russian Far East resources could amount to 20 billion tons of oil equivalent out of an estimated total of more than 100 billion tons on Russia's entire Continental Shelf, most of it gas, said Vladislav Chtcherbakov, first deputy chairman of Russia's Committee on Geology & Use of Mineral Resources.

This is the potential of a 3.6 million sq km offshore area that extends from the Barents Sea north of the Arctic Circle around the Bering Strait to the Sea of Okhotsk off Sakhalin Island, Chtcher- bakov told the 1996 Offshore Technology Conference (OGJ, June 3, 1996, p. 29). He said state sponsored exploration had all but dried up, and that foreign investment had taken up only part of the slack.

The vast area from the Kara Sea to offshore Magadan has had practically no exploratory drilling, but then-existing data had revealed 40 offshore basins, Chtcherbakov said. Only 110 oil and gas wells had been drilled off Russia, including 66 at Sakhalin and 35 in the western Arctic, he said.

A basin study by Dr. James Clarke, a Great Falls, Va., consultant on the Former Soviet Union, includes data from one source that gives the following initial resource estimates:

Isikari-West Sakhalin, as much as 33 billion bbl of oil equivalent in place; Okhotsk-West Kamchatka, more than 56 billion BOE; Sakhalin-Okhotsk, up to 46 billion BOE; South Okhotsk, up to 21 billion BOE; Anadyr, 15 billion BOE; Navarin, up to 20 billion BOE; Aleutian, up to 56 billion BOE; and Olyutor-Komandor, 18 billion BOE.

Exploration prospects

About 59 oil fields are known in the Russian Far East, including 11 in Yakutia (Sakha), three near Magadan, and 45 in the Sakhalin area, five of which are on the shelf of the Sea of Okhotsk, writes Eugene M. Khartukov, East-West Center, Honolulu.

Of 11 oil fields, 14 oil and gas fields, 17 gas/condensate fields, and 17 oil, gas, and condensate fields discovered in the RFE, 24 are being developed, all in the Sakhalin area (see map, OGJ, Apr. 25, 1994, p. 69).

Khartukov said the RFE had 92 known gas fields as of early 1992, including 30 in Yakutia, 55 at Sakhalin, four in Kamchatka, two in Magadan, and one in the Khaba- rovsk territory.

"The prospects for new oil and gas discoveries and major reserve additions are definitely bound up with sedimentary basins of the RFE continental shelf," Khartukov wrote. "In addition to the most explored areas off northeastern Sakhalin, fairly high geological perspectives are offered by the North Okhotsk (or Magadan) shelf with thickness of sediments ranging from 2,500-5,000 m." The prospective area covers about 175,000 sq km.

"Even less explored is the West Kamchatka shelf with its prospective areas of 115,000 sq km," he said. No drilling has occurred there, but commercial gas discoveries in the adjacent Kamchatka Peninsula and similarity of its Paleogene-Neogene sediments with those of the Sakhalin shelf "make this area one of the most attractive," Khartukov wrote.

"Substantial discoveries of hydrocarbons are expected also on the shelf of the Bering Sea, especially in the Anadyr, Khatyr, and Navarin troughs, where density of predicted recoverable reserves of oil is estimated at 14,800 tons/sq km."

Officials of Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region said in early 1998 that wildcatting will begin there this fall if results of seismic surveys by specialists from Irkutskgeofizika show promise. Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources provided more than 7 million rubles for the 1998 work, Grigori Goncharov, head of the region's geological committee, told the Itar-Tass news agency.

The region, with its capital in Birobidzhan, 100 miles west of Khabarovsk, ran airborne geophysical surveys in mid-1997.

ARCO signed protocols in late 1990 with Magadan and Chukotka regional councils but pulled out in the early 1990s after finding the areas nonprospective. ARCO's more recent joint venture activities with Lukoil do not involve the RFE.

Lukoil signed a deal at yearend 1996 to supply petroleum products and build gasoline stations in the Chukotsky autonomous region. The pact required Lukoil to explore for oil on the Chukotka Peninsula (OGJ, Dec. 23, 1996, p. 38). This area is a short distance west of Alaska across the International Date Line.

Meanwhile, the total area regarded as prospective for hydrocarbon exploration in the inland Sakha (Yakutia) Republic exceeds 1.64 million sq km (OGJ, Aug. 8, 1994, p. 70).

Other considerations

Previous efforts at exploring various RFE areas have largely ended in disappointment due to a variety of factors.

For example, the northern part of Sakhalin Island, where Exxon, Russian, and Japanese companies hope to develop offshore oil and gas fields, is at 54° N. Lat. Ice-free access is limited to about 100 days/year, and platforms must be designed to withstand ice, earthquake, and wave forces, Exxon points out.

Even in that area, where some oil and gas infrastructure exists, ports, roads, bridges, airports, transportation and communication systems need repair and expansion.

Observers have stressed that pipelines and transportation facilities are badly needed if Russia is to realize value from its far eastern resources (OGJ, May 15, 1995, p. 26).

The only RFE refineries are at Komsomolsk-on-Amur, inland from Sakhalin Island, and Khabarovsk.

The former International Petroleum Corp., Dubai, now Lundin Oil AB, Stockholm, and Chukotneftegasgeologia signed an agreement in late 1992 to assess the technical and economic feasibility of producing small onshore oil fields in the Anadyr and Khatyr basins. The deal was aimed at generating exports.

Crude from the two basins has a high wax content but is low in sulfur, and the fields are close to the Bering Sea coast. However, the study did not result in new drilling.

Farther south, oil reserves are not thought to be large in the southern Kuril Islands, a chain that stretches between Hokkaido and the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula, Itar-Tass reported in April. It quoted Yuri Tronov, an expert with the Russian Zarubezhneft association and former chief geologist of Sakhalinmorneftegazprom, the Sakhalin agency for offshore oil and gas extraction.

Tronov said the Soviets planned to drill on Kunashir Island in the 1970s-80s and that the Sakhalin geological association planned to drill a "parametric" well, but that no drilling resulted.

Itar-Tass also reported that other Russian petroleum sources said in March 1998 that considerable oil and gas resources might exist in the southern Kuriles, subject of a territorial dispute between Russia and Japan.