SOVIETS OFFER KAZAKH EXPLORATION AGREEMENTS

A local Soviet business association in northwestern Kazakhstan is trying to interest non-Soviet companies in exploration and production agreements. Attention needs to be paid to the area on a new technological level, says Boris 1. Sokolov of Shevchenko. Sokolov is foreign director of Intercaspian, the association of business relations with foreign countries. Sokolov says the Kazakh republic has a great need to discover new fields because Dossor and Makat oil fields, opened in 1911, are nearly

Feb. 4, 1991

3 min read

A local Soviet business association in northwestern Kazakhstan is trying to interest non-Soviet companies in exploration and production agreements.

Attention needs to be paid to the area on a new technological level, says Boris 1. Sokolov of Shevchenko. Sokolov is foreign director of Intercaspian, the association of business relations with foreign countries.

Sokolov says the Kazakh republic has a great need to discover new fields because Dossor and Makat oil fields, opened in 1911, are nearly depleted (see map, OGJ, Sept. 17, 1990, p. 69).

The Makat District Executive Committee of People's Deputies Soviet of Guryev oblast and lntercaspian are looking for foreign partners for carrying out supplementary exploration in Makat district at their own risk.

If the search for new oil fields is successful, then the finder will be contracted for oil production in Makat district on the leasehold or on any other suitable basis, Sokolov said.

Interested parties may contact Intercaspian at: Post box 281, Dom sviazi (Communication House), Shevchenko, 466200 KazSSR, U.S.S.R.

GEOLOGY, GEOPHYSICS

Commercializing postsalt oil deposits in Guryev region is still attractive, write Soviet geophysicists B.B. Nuraliev and G.Y. Voronov.

The main oil reserves of Dossor-Makat oil fields associated with salt dome structures are concentrated in Cretaceous and Jurassic deposits that are adjacent to arches.

Now they are substantially exhausted, and the general situation in the region is rather difficult.

The further development of hydrocarbon production in Dossor-Makat oil bearing area depends basically on resolving the problem of whether the Jurassic-Cretaceous and Permo-Triassic deposits are prospective.

The existence of various structural and non-anticlinal oil and gas traps is extremely probable, they said.

"Analysis of the geological and geophysical data gained in recent years shows that (exploration) was carried out only in the zones of salt domes adjacent to arches where oil accumulations were assumed to have been concentrated only in arch type oil traps among rocks of Jurassic age," Nuraliev and Voronov said.

The oil bearing capacity and the Triassic structure were discussed only briefly.

But appropriate preconditions exist for the formation of lithologic-stratigraphic traps in Triassic and Jurassic and of the structures coupled with salt ledges.

Exploration for these features requires increased reliability of the geophysical information for the proper estimation of structural-tectonic conditions of the basic oil bearing objectives, the geophysicists said.

"The accumulated geophysical data show that the problem mentioned above could be decided through the system approach including the structural drilling down to 3 km, detailed volume seismic with the use of 500 to 1,000-channel stations, vertical seismic profiling, seismic well shooting, geophysical study of old wells, and also the forecast of the geophysical profile.

"We may conclude that from the geological point of view the Dossor-Makat petroliferous area up to now has not been well explored, and nobody can say that all the prospects of this large area have been cleared out.

"We are quite sure that the additional exploration will get good results on Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic formations," the geophysicists said.