Business news

MINSK, 16 October (BelTA) – By 2020 Belarus’ oil reserves are expected to increase by 3 million tonnes, BelTA learned from Belarusian Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Minister Andrei Khudyk.

The official said: “Taking into account the geological prospecting work that has been done, Belarus’ oil reserves are expected to increase by 3 million tonnes by 2020. New areas with a lot of promise for extracting hydrocarbon resources will be detected. Work to find new reserves of hydrocarbon resources will continue in the current five-year term using new methods and technologies, which are successfully utilized in the CIS states such as drilling boreholes for explosions, vibration-powered seismic exploration, downhole surveys using vertical seismic profiling.”

Andrei Khudyk went on saying that prospecting for oil reserves is a lengthy and expensive process. “Not all the prospecting wells result in new oil reserves. Statistics says that there are three to five dry wells per every successful well. It takes about six months to drill one well. Before an oil reservoir with sufficient reserves is found, you have to do some prospecting work first. You have to find an oil-bearing structure and get it ready for deep drilling. Sometimes oil-bearing structures turn out to be a failure. Prospecting for oil involves a lot of unknown factors. It is impossible to guess right whether a specific site contains oil or not,” said the natural resources and environmental protection minister.

Andrei Khudyk also talked about prospects of extracting shale gas in Belarus by implementing the concession contract on studying eight sites of subsurface resources for finding reserves of dispersed hydrocarbon gas (shale gas) and other liquid and gaseous fossil fuels in low-condition reservoirs. “In order to talk about prospects of extracting this kind of raw materials, it is necessary to carry out an entire set of geological prospecting work, including the development of feasibility studies to justify the advisability of exploring a specific site. I also have to mention that extracting shale gas and shale oil requires the relevant technologies. The current market prices for hydrocarbon resources play a large part in authorizing the extraction of shale gas and shale oil,” explained the official.

As many as 83 reservoirs of oil and natural gas liquids have been found in Belarus. All of them are located in the Pripyat Trough, Gomel Oblast.