Current problems of geopetroleum science in the coming decades

State of the hydrocarbon raw material base of the Russian federation for the past 25 years as well as the amount of regional investigations funded from federal budget resources, exploration activities carried out by the subsoil users, and the state of licensing are discussed. It is shown that total reserves of A, B, C1 (according to old classification system) categories have decreased by 0.6 bln tons over the last 25 years, though this decrease is covered by the increase in C2 category resources (from 8.7 bln tons in 1993 to 11.2 bln tons in 2018); i.e. the amount of Prospective Resources has increased by 39 % over these 25 years. Therefore, there has been virtually no change in total amount of resources in all the categories over the last 25 years. At the same time, the quantitative assessment of resource potential is continuously growing with each step of clarification. The methodology developed for the regional stage of studies of Russian oil and gas bearing areas taking into account new geological and geophysical methods and information technologies contributed greatly to this. It is noted that regional works funded from federal budget have obvious trends of reducing the actual amount of all types of geological and exploration works, which affects the preparation of promising objects to licensing. Currently, only 34 % of oil and gas promising areas are licensed in Russian Federation, so it is necessary to sharply increase the amount of works in the prospecting stage. The authors show possibilities of large-scale growth of new reserves in the Timano-Barentsevomorsky and Caspian (above-salt series) basins, in the Urals Foreland Basin, and in the Eastern Siberia. They formulated the actual problems of oil and gas geology and ways to solve them and define the priority areas of oil and gas geology development for the sake of building the capacity of hydrocarbon raw material base. Progress in oil and gas industry depends entirely on raising technical level of exploration equipment to the world standards. For the purpose of radical improvement of laboratory, analytical, and instrumentation base, software and methodological support, the scientific scope should be accompanied by the appropriate process