Russia's West Siberian Basin is a vast, remote, and forbidding region where winter lasts two-thirds of the year, wintertime temperatures average between five degrees and minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and the terrain consists of swamps, waterlogged soils, shallow lakes, and permafrost. Yet its large reserves of crude oil and natural gas (see table) have invited extensive development and made the region the source of roughly 70 percent of Russia's oil and 90 percent of its natural gas, according to Oil and Gas Resources of the West Siberian Basin, Russia, newly released by the Energy Information Administration.

Estimated Crude Oil, Condensate, and Natural Gas Resources of the West Siberian Basin,
Year End 1994 (Oil) and 1993 (Gas)

Resource Description	Oil and Condensate Billion Barrels	Natural Gas Trillion Cubic Feet
Cumulative Production	49.3	214
Developed Fields (Remaining Estimated Ultimate Recovery)	65.8	551
Discovered Undeveloped Fields (Estimated Ultimate Recovery)	51.0	341
Undiscovered Resources (USGS, Mean Value)	50.4	1084
Basin Total Resources	216.5	2190

Note: USGS is the United States Geological Survey.
Source: Energy Information Administration.

Although natural gas fields were discovered in the basin in 1953, the remote location deterred production for 10 years. The first major oil field discovery, in 1961, was the Samotlor field, which has turned out to be one of the world's largest. Production there began in 1964. Both oil and gas production in the basin have declined in recent years. Crude oil and condensate production fell from its 1988 peak of 3.1 billion barrels to 1.5 billion barrels in 1994. Production of natural gas peaked in 1991 at 20.3 trillion cubic feet, declining to 20.1 trillion cubic feet in 1993. The total remaining oil resources of the basin are nominally sufficient to support the historical peak production rate of 3.1 billion barrels per year for more than 35 years. Total remaining natural gas resources could support production of about 21 trillion cubic feet per year for at least 30 years. However, the estimated ultimate recovery values shown in the table above represent the basin's maximum potential, including estimated undiscovered resources, not economically recoverable reserves.

The report discusses the geology of the basin and reviews the analysis, the data, the means of determining ultimate recovery values, and the production projections. A computer diskette included with the report contains data for individual reservoirs of the fields in the basin.

Contact:

Floyd Wiesepape, Office of Oil and Gas/Dallas Field Office

floyd.wiesepape@eia.doe.gov

Phone: (214) 720-6166

URL: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/plugs/plsiber.html