Gazprom Neft subsidiary Gazpromneft-Khantos has acquired development rights to deep strata at the southern section of the Priobskoye field in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, increasing reserves by more than 10.4 million tonnes of oil.

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Gazpromneft-Khantos was awarded rights to hydrocarbon exploration and production in deep horizons at the southern section of the Priobskoye field, with the Federal Subsoil Resources Management Agency (Rosnedra) making appropriate adjustments to the terms of the original license, allowing the company to begin developing deposits forming part of the Priobskoye field but previously designated open acreage. 

Gazpromneft-Khantos had, hitherto, been developing strata lying at a depth of 2,700 metres. Increasing this limit to 3,200 metres gives the business access to Tyumenskaya and Achimovsky strata, as well as to the Bazhenov Formation. According to the State Reserves Register, this will open up subsoil usage rights to reserves in place of more than 10.4 million tonnes of oil and approximately 2.5 million tonnes of recoverable reserves. 

The results of investigations into Achimovsky strata in the southern part of the Priobskoye field were a prerequisite for extending the license - the business having obtained oil-saturated inflow of 51 tonnes per day following the drilling of a 3,300-metre prospecting well in 2019, confirming the commercial viability of developing the block’s Achimovsky strata.

Gazpromneft-Khantos plans to drill more than 30 horizontal wells, involving multi-stage fracking, at a pre-tested block from 2020. Peak production is expected to be reached in 2023, reaching more than 400,000 tonnes of oil equivalent per year.

Yuri Masalkin, Director for Geological Exploration and Resource Base Development, Gazprom Neft commented:
“Bringing hard-to-recover reserves into development is a key strategic area in Gazprom Neft’s expansion of its resource base. The company has built up extensive and successful experience in hydrocarbon production at Achimovsky strata in the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs. These skills, together with existing production infrastructure, will prove an advantage for us in developing lower formations in the southern part of the Priobskoye field. Oil and gas reserves in place at Achimovsky strata throughout Western Siberia stand at approximately 35 billion tonnes. Increasing access to these colossal reserves means we can not only maintain current production levels at existing fields, but also create the opportunity to increase these.”

Background

Gazprom Neft’s greater access at the Priobskoye field was achieved using the “cut in” mechanism. This envisages part of a field’s open-acreage reserves being allocated to a subsoil user by means of the boundaries of a block for which it holds a license being adjusted, either in terms of total surface area or depth.

Since 2017 Gazprom Neft has used the same mechanism to expand the boundaries of the Gazpromneft-Noyabrskneftegaz Krainiy license block in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the Shinginsky and Archinsky fields in the Tomsk Oblast, the eastern block of the Orenburg oil and gas condensate field, and the Filatovskoye+Tsarichanskoye fields, Orenburg.

The Priobskoye field was discovered in 1982 and brought into development in 1999. It is deemed unique in terms of its recoverable oil reserves, but categorised as complex in terms of its underlying geology. The southern part of Priobskoye field is located in the Khanty-Mansiysk district of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug—Yugra, 65 km east of Khanty-Mansiysk and 115 km west of Nefteyugansk. The closest fields to the southern part of the Priobskoye field are the Salym and Prirazlomnoye fields, as well as the neighbouring northern part of Priobskoye field.

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