Pre-Salt Oil Deposits to be Explored in Kalmykia
The Caspian field will also be restarted.
The Caspian oil field in the Lagansky region of Kalmykia will be re-launched for oil production in the shortest possible time. IA “Devon” learned about this from the message of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Republic. Specialists will also carry out additional reconnaissance at the oil field, Minister Ochir DZHAMBINOV said.
On February 21, Yugnedra will hold an auction for the right to explore and produce hydrocarbons in the Caspian area in Kalmykia. Applications will close on January 27th. The starting size of a one-time payment is 264.362 million rubles. The license is issued for 20 years. “The Caspian oil field was previously in development,” the minister added. “Its operating fund is 18 wells. There are drilled wells in the field, which are in conservation.”
The Caspian field was discovered in 1960. According to the value of the initial recoverable oil reserves, it belongs to the medium ones, according to the features of the geological structure – to the complex ones. The current geological oil reserves are 14 million tons.
In addition, geological exploration of gas and oil fields in the Yustinskaya area will begin this year. Experts will justify the point of laying a parametric well. Official confirmation of support for the work was received from the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation and Rosnedra. The area is located within the Yustinsky subsalt uplift of the Sarpinsky trough of the Caspian depression, the Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of Kalmykia said.
The Yustinskaya area is one of the most promising areas for prospecting for oil and gas deposits in the republic. Kalmykia is one of the least explored regions in Russia, where only 2 to 8% of hydrocarbon reserves have been explored. The resource base of the region, according to experts, is about 19 billion tons of reference fuel.
“If new oil and gas fields are discovered, new jobs will appear in the republic,” Ochir Dzhambinov believes. – Revenues to the budgets of all levels will increase. The socio-economic situation in the region will improve. All this will allow Kalmykia to make a breakthrough in development.”
Despite the fact that oil and gas fields in Kalmykia have been developed for a long time, the republic cannot be attributed to the old oil and gas producing regions. Alexander AFANASENKOV, First Deputy General Director of Rosgeology, spoke about this earlier. The Republic is located within the Caspian and North Caucasian oil and gas provinces.
“At the same time, its territory has been explored by geological and geophysical methods in an extremely heterogeneous way,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta quotes him as saying. – The least studied is the Caspian sector. And the fact that deep parametric drilling was practically not carried out in the republic negatively affects the attraction of subsoil users to this promising region.”
Back in 1970 – 1980, giant oil and gas fields were discovered in the neighboring Astrakhan region and Kazakhstan. Financial resources and production capacities were spent on their development, Afanasenkov explains. “In such a situation, promising areas of Kalmykia were forgotten for several decades,” says the deputy general director. – Therefore, the geological and geophysical knowledge of the republic is now low. Significant unexplored resources are concentrated here in the pre-salt horizons of the Caspian province at a depth of five or more kilometers.”
Low drilling knowledge, significant depth of oil and gas deposits and complex geological structure hinder exploration.
There are about 50 oil and gas fields in Kalmykia. The total initial recoverable reserves of hydrocarbons in them are about 110 million tons of oil equivalent. At the same time, the reserves of discovered fields have been depleted by an average of 26% (as of 2021).
“Some of them are not being developed today,” notes the top manager of Rosnedr. – It can be stated that the extraction of hydrocarbon raw materials in the republic has been insignificant in recent years. For example, in 2020, only 80,000 tons of oil and 47 million cubic meters of gas were produced.”
“Over the past decade, no new hydrocarbon deposits have been discovered in the republic,” continues Afanasenkov. – The increase in reserves based on the results of exploration work carried out by subsoil users at old deposits is insignificant. The scope of seismic exploration and deep drilling is also small.”