RAW MATERIAL SOURCE OF HYDROCARBONS OF THE ARCTIC ZONE OF RUSSIA

Abstract

The study of the hydrocarbon potential of the Arctic is being considered in Russia as the most crucial direction of preparing a new raw material base of oil and gas, which will replace the extracted reserves in traditional areas of development during the second third of this century. The sharp fall in global hydrocarbon prices has led to a reduction in research and exploration costs, especially in hard-to-reach areas and hard-to-recover reserves as well as the need to determine the contribution to the country's fuel and energy balance from the hydrocarbons development of the Arctic zone, including the shelf, without which it is impossible to plan and develop new expensive projects. A fair assessment of oil and gas potential, based on a set of ideas about the processes of formation of sedimentary basins and oil and gas generation processes, contributed to obtaining new geophysical information on the results of seismic work executed in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation between 2010 and 2020. A quantitative assessment of oil and gas resources was performed using geological analogies (for wellstudied geological and geophysical areas) and the volume-genetic method (for less studied basins). It showed significant differences from the most well-known assessments of the Arctic, both in terms of the total volume of hydrocarbons and their phase composition. It was concluded that there is ambiguity in assessing the potential of deepwater zones of the Arctic seas. Because of that, it is important to study coastal and shallow areas, especially oil content.