OREANDA-NEWS. December 11, 2013. The professionals of JSC TATNEFT took part in the international forum "Unconventional Oil of Russia and methods of enhanced oil recovery" organized by the Adam Smith Institute in Moscow.

The international forum brought together heads of state and commercial structures, top managers of Russian and foreign oil companies. The event participants discussed business strategies and production capabilities for the development of the unconventional oil segment, addressed the issues related to industrial, commercial and economic features of increasing oil production from the unconventional oil reserves, shared their experiences in the field of the unconventional oil and the oil recovery enhancement.

The report "Study of the geological structure and experience of developing unconventional oil and gas reserves in JSC TATNEF” was presented at the forum by Rais Khisamov, Deputy Director General and Chief Geologist of JSC TATNEFT.

He pointed out in his presentation that the growth of oil production in the Company had amounted to more than 2 million tons over the past 15 years. It had become possible as a result of the production stabilization at the unique Romashkinskoye oil field with the current annual production of 15.2 million tons and involvement in the development of hard-to-recover oil reserves, as well as through the application of new drilling and well construction technologies, introduction of new technologies (dual completion and production), reorganization of the reservoir pressure maintenance system, application of enhanced oil recovery methods, etc. JSC TATNEFT plans to achieve the level of oil production in the amount of 26.1 million tons by the end of 2013.

Over the past few years the Company has been extensively developing drilling of horizontal wells and multilateral wells to involve hard-to-recover reserves into active development. More 200 fracturing operations have been performed in 2013, which make a technical and technological basis for the development of unconventional oil deposits.

Production drilling operations are continued and expanded at Ashalchinskoye extra-viscous oil (EVO) field of the Company. 24 pairs and 5 single horizontal wells have been drilled since the beginning of the field development in 2006 and 19 well pairs are in operation currently. The daily oil production is 533 tons, while the accumulated production is more than 310 thousand tons. The expected level of oil production in 2013 will be 145 tons.

JSC TATNEFT has got 33 extra-viscous fields included in the State balance sheet with recoverable reserves up to 108 million tons. Reservoir development plans have been compiled for these deposits.  For involvement of these reserves in the development the Company is working to address the technological and legislative issues related to the production and use of EVO.

JSC TATNEFT studies the prospects of shale oil production. The Company is implementing the program of shale oil studies for 2013-2014 providing for setting up of  proving grounds to test the technologies for geological exploration and production of shale oil of Domanik deposit reservoirs with low reservoir properties. The plans for the future envisage development of technologies and equipment for the study and development of shale deposits.