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Abstract. Russian sea shelves cover about 3.9 million sq. km (14% of total world area).
The petroleum potential of the Russian shelves exceeds the hydrocarbon (HC) reserves of the North Sea more than tenfold. However, 82% of the HC resources of the Russian shelf are confined to the Arctic seas with an extremely severe environment (low temperatures, ice, high waves, storms and hurricanes, etc.). About 14% of the undiscovered resources lie in the Far East and 4%-in the Russian sectors of the Baltic and Caspian seas.
Russian offshore HC resources are poorly developed. Oil reserves to resources ratio is about 1% in the Arctic seas and about 13% in the Far East seas. 30 oil and gas fields have been discovered and quite a few promising structures identified in the Russian sea shelves. Geologic structure and development conditions of the following fields are given in brief: Peschano-Ozerskoye (1982), Gulyayevskoye North (1986), Prirazlomnoye (1989) (the Barents Sea); Odoptu Offshore (1977), Chaivo Offshore (1979), Lunskoye Offshore (1984), Piltun-Astokhskoye (1986), Arkutun-Daginskoye (1989) (the Sea of Okhotsk).
Oil discoveries are classified according to their commercial importance and development conditions. Oil production volume from new Russian offshore discoveries is forecasted. The importance of world experience, application of advanced technologies and up-to-date equipment for offshore oil exploration, production and drilling in Russia is evaluated.
INTRODUCTION The total area of the offshore provinces of Russia including both the outer seas (Arctic and Far East) and the inner seas (Caspian, Baltic, Rlack Seas and Sea of Azov) amounts to nearly four million km2, or 14% of the world's shallow water offshore regions.
The water depth at the edge of the shelves reaches 240 m while the width varies greatly from 5 up to 1350 km. Numerous depositional basins are to be found within this vast offshore area, of which the largest are as follows: - East Barents, South Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi in the Arctic - Anadyr, Navarin, Khatyrka, Olyutorsk-Komandor, North Sakhalin, Okhotsk-Kamchatka and South Okhotsk in the Far East The oil and gas potential of Russia's offshore provinces is 6 times larger than that of the North Sea.
However, 82% of its resources are located within the Arctic Seas which feature the most harsh climatic conditions (i.e. low temperatures, thick sea ice for most of the year, high waves and storm force winds etc.). The Far Eastern seas account for 14% of the potential resources while 4% is to be found in the Baltic, Caspian, Black Sea and Azov provinces. Most of the hydrocarbons remain undiscovered. So far only about 1% of the potential reserves in the A
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