July 12, 2013
For the first time Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation Sergey Donskoy announced official oil and hydrocarbons reserves in the Russian Federation publicly. "At the beginning of July 2013 the Government of the Russian Federation approved the Regulation # 569, which excluded hydrocarbons from the list of strategic mineral resources, details of which had been classified before. Thus, today we can speak openly about resources held by the our country. By January 1, 2012 in Russia oil resources of categories A + B + C1 were 17.8 billion tons, of category C2 10.9 billion tons. They are the largest oil resources in the world. “I am convinced that declassification of this data will give a powerful impetus to investment in reproduction of mineral raw material base and in oil extraction", - said S. Donskoy at an extended meeting on the State Reserves Register and the Russian classification system for hydrocarbon reserves.
According to expert opinions, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and the State Commission on Mineral Reserves (FGU GKZ), existence reserves must supply the needs of the Russian economy for 30 years. During the meeting, the Minister also noted that in recent years reserves increment had been exceeding production capacity due to intensive exploration of hydrocarbons. For example, last year, an increase of proven oil and condensate reserves was 650 million tons, an increase of proven of free gas reserves was 800 billion m3. 49 deposits have been discovered including Velikoe deposit (JSC "Oil and Gas Company" AFB") of which resources of categories C1 + C2 42.3 million tons, Mazure deposit (JSC "NK" Rosneft") with 39.7 million tons and gas field Ilbokichkskoe (OAO" Gazprom ") with 59.0 billion m3.