Samotlor Field
Samotlor Field is the largest oil field of Russia, located at Lake Samotlor in Urals Federal District, Siberia (Coordinates: Unable to parse latitude as a number:61_7_N_76_45_E
{{#coordinates:}}: invalid latitude). Discovery of this field in 1965 had changed Nizhnevartovsk from a small nearby village into a busy oil city. Samotlor used to be the most important oil production base of the Soviet Union. This field reached its peak production of 7 million barrels (1,000,000 m³) of oil per day in 1980, more than half of the whole nation's production. Attempting to maintain production by injecting water into the field resulted in water mixing with the remaining oil. The production has been in decline ever since.
In 1997 Samotlor Field, which was then thirty years old, had produced over 16 billion (2.5 km³) barrels of oil. Production rate had dropped to 300,000 barrels (47,700 m³) per day. This oil field was considered to be nearly depleted. However, advanced Western technologies allow for the extraction of more oil. Based on high-quality 3D seismic survey, US oil field service companies plan to drill 4,500 horizontal wells in addition to the existing 17,000 wells, which allowed the production rate to rebound to 450,000 barrels (72,000 m³) per day.
Ultimate recovery of Samotlor, estimated by U.S. Geological Survey in 2000, is about 20 billion barrels (3.2 km³). Also, many large oil fields presently found in the adjacent area, making the West Siberian Basin one of the major oil production regions of the world.
The location of Samotlor Field is still censored on many maps produced in Russia, a holdover from secrecy practices in the Soviet Union, despite the fact that it can be easily located using civilian satellite mapping technology. The field is currently operated by TNK-BP.
According to Matthew R. Simmons, Samotlor oil production peaked at just under 3.5 million barrels per day in 1983. His book "Twilight in the Desert" takes this information from Thane Gustafson's "Crisis Amid Plenty". The entire instantaneous oil production rate from West Siberia is what peaked at over 7 million barrels per day in the early 1980s.
References
- Kramer, Andrew E. "Mapmakers and Mythmakers: Russian Disinformation Practices Obscure Even Today's Oil Fields," New York Times (1 December 2005): C1.