Russia aims to offset depleting oil resources and rising development costs in the long term by tapping in to increased opportunities for its gas resources, including liquefied natural gas.
Authorities in the country are taking aim at pipeline gas, LNG and, longer term, unconventional gas activities, Natural Resources & Environmental Minister Dmitry Kobylkin reiterated at an industry forum in the city of Tyumen in West Siberia on Wednesday.
Kobylkin said that Russia has an estimated 73 trillion cubic metres of conventional gas reserves under its control.
Because of the relatively low development cost of such traditional reserves, Kobylkin said the development of higher cost shale gas, gas hydrates and coal bed methane is a more distant aspiration for Russia.
This is in sharp contrast to the country’s oil industry, which has had to deal with major declines at the country’s exhausted oilfields in almost all of its oil provinces.
Russian oil producers have to invest heavily in tertiary recovery methods and actively study development options to tap unconventional and hard-to-recover oil reservoirs in deeper layers in the West Siberia and Volga-Urals regions.
Russian gas production rose by 5% last year to an 18-year record high of 725 billion cubic metres in 2018, authorities said earlier.
Gas output continues to grow this year due to robust domestic demand and increasing LNG exports by Yamal LNG, Russian largest LNG development, which is led by Novatek.
The gas independent claims that development costs at its gas fields on the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas are among the lowest in the world, despite the remoteness of these areas and their harsh environment.
State-controlled monopoly Gazprom said earlier this week that its gas output rose by 1% to over 348 Bcm between 1 January and 15 September, despite a 4% decline in gas sales to its core markets in Europe during the period.
