SAMOTLOR: THE GIANT OF SIBERIA

The Samotlor oil field is located in the Tyumen region of the vast West Siberian Lowland of Russia. It was named after the lake Samotlor where first oil was discovered in 1965.
Oil and gas potential near the Samotlor lake was found in 18 productive reservoirs associated with the Jurassic and Cretaceous systems, lying at depths from 1,600 to 2,500 meters.
Samotlor field has been for decades the largest oil field of Russia and one of the largest in the world.
Development started in 1967 and production in 1969. First wells daily output was ranging between 47 and 1,400 barrels. Production peaked in 1980 at nearly 3.2 million barrels per day, almost half of Russia’s output. As a result of heavy production these years, oil-bearing formations began to water, and crude oil production was less than one million barrels per day at the end of the 1990’s. However, through an aggressive exploration program and application of cutting-edge technologies TNK-BP then Rosneft, raised production up to 750,000 barrels per day. In the course of field development in total there have been drilled 19,000 wells, producing more than 2,576 billion tons of oil. By the end of 2017 the Board of Directors of Rosneft decided to drill up to 2,400 wells from 2018 to 2027.
Discovery of the field changed Nizhnevartovsk from a small nearby village along the right bank of the Ob River into a busy oil city to support the Samotlor oilfield activity. Nizhnevartovsk’s population skyrocketed from 2300 people in 1959 to 15,663 in 1970, today more than 250,000.
Even if the water-cut exceeds 90%, experts have faith in the future of Samotlor, today operated by Rosneft, and think that the field may be producing till the end of this century.