BAZHENOV TECHNOLOGY CENTRE: UNLOCKING HARD-TO-RECOVER HYDOCARBONS

Established by Gazprom Neft in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, the main objective of the Bazhenov Technology Centre LLC is to develop a range of commercially viable domestic technologies to develop the Bazhenov Formation.
The portfolio of this new legal entity will be made up of licence blocks already held on the balance sheet of Gazpromneft-Khantos and having good prospects in terms of the development of Bazhenov Formation reserves. The Bazhenov cluster will comprise the Pal’yanovskaya area within the Krasnoleninskoye field, five licence blocks within the Nyalinskaya group of fields, and three blocks in the Salymsk field.
The search for ways to develop hard-to-recover reserves in Russia is a strategic priority for Gazprom Neft, with the project to develop a range of domestic technologies for developing the Bazhenov Formation, implementation of which was initiated by the company, having been awarded the status of a national project in May 2017. A pool of oil companies, scientific research organisations, service companies and industrial equipment manufacturers interested in addressing this challenge has now been put in place.
The Bazhen project now includes more than 20 participating partners. Gazprom Neft plans to invest approximately RUB7.5 billion in its implementation, and expects to commence commercial production as early as 2025.
The Bazhenov Formation comprises a group of oil-bearing rocks covering an area of approximately one million square kilometres in Western Siberia. The formation is shallow, and lies at a depth of two to three kilometres. Provisional forecasts indicate geological reserves at the Bazhenov Formation to be in the order of 18 to 60 billion tonnes, while geologists’ more optimistic assessments suggest oil resources could be as much as 100 to 170 billion tonnes. There are not, currently, any effective technologies for working with the Bazhenov formation. (Source: Gazprom Neft)