Khanty-Mansi autonomous okrug - Yugra: results and promising areas for exploration

Given giant amount of hydrocarbon resources discovered in the West Siberian Petroleum Province, the urgent problem is the replenishment of the mineral resource base of this territory. Prospecting for new accumulations is associated not only with the studies of the deposits containing difficult-to-recover reserves, but also with the plays historically developed in the Western Siberia. The deposits of the entire oil and gas column are promising for exploration all over the territory of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Yugra; these are Lower Cretaceous and Jurassic deposits, which host reservoirs that do not always have low porosity and permeability. Acreage of the territories belonging to unallocated fund of subsurface mineral resources and having low exploration maturity is rather large within the Okrug. The results of geological and geophysical data integration and estimates of total initial hydrocarbon resources over all the plays from the unallocated fund of subsurface mineral resources of Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug - Yugra allowed identifying 14 areas of interest and dividing them into three groups according to expected potential. Territory of the allocated fund of subsurface mineral resources is also underexplored; almost all of the subsoil users’ areas are limited in exploration depth, so the Lower Jurassic and pre-Jurassic deposits in most of the territory are not being studied. Activity of subsoil user companies in documenting the exploration licenses for deep horizons is low and results from the degree of the discovered reserve depletion. Making easier the access to studies of the deeper lying deposits is one of the ways to support amount of prospecting efforts