Russian Federation Continental shelf: update of quantitative estimate of oil, gas, and condensate resources as on 01.01.2017. Results and opportunities

Quantitative assessment of hydrocarbon resources is one of the main instruments of prediction of petroleum potential, substantiation of priority areas of geological exploration, and making strategic management decisions. Since 2017, VNIIOkeangeologiya has been updating the quantitative assessment of oil, gas and condensate resources of the Russian Federation continental shelf as of 01.01.2017. The considerable increase in geological and geophysical exploration maturity allowed updating and correction of geopetroleum zoning, characterising promising petroleum systems, substantiating the identified plays, and, eventually, quantification of HC resources for all 13 Russian Federation’s seas using the unified methodological approaches. Assessment using the probabilistic methods was for the first time conducted for the shelf of East Arctic seas. As a result, the Unified GIS Project was created that contains the structured digital data and resultant digital maps; and since 2020, the annual updating of these data is carried out in monitoring mode, including the completion of information and analytical base, revision of resource estimates, analysis of the current total initial HC resources