Northern Krasnoyarsk Territory at center of geological developments in modern Russia - Rosnedra head

MOSCOW. June 18 (Interfax) - The geological exploration of the Yenisei-Khatanga Basin is an extremely important milestone in the development of Russia's oil and gas sector, the head of the Federal Mineral Resources Agency (Rosnedra), Oleg Kazanov said in an interview with Interfax ahead of the 2025 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"What is happening in the Yenisei-Khatanga Basin in northern Krasnoyarsk Territory is a genuine geological battleground. And not in the sense that there are many license holders, oil and gas companies there that will fight for resources, but in the sense that this is where the main geological events of modern Russia are unfolding," Kazanov said.

He recalled that a flow of light oil was obtained in April at the Novoyakimovskaya-1 parametric well in the central part of the basin.

"When it was drilled the objective was not to get oil. This is a parametric well intended to study the reservoir features, the particulars of the regional geology, seismic profiles. The fact that there was a flow of oil from a parametric well gives great hopes for the prospects of oil and gas occurrence in northern Krasnoyarsk Territory," Kazanov said.

He also noted the importance of Rosneft's Vostok Oil project, the "largest geological exploration project in the country and, I think, the whole world."

The company still has to get a sense of the local resource base, he said. "For Vostok Oil it is partially based at the Vankor cluster, the Paiyakhskoye field is being planned for launch," Kazanov said.

"The potential prospects of northern Krasnoyarsk Territory are estimated to be high, about 5 billion tonnes of oil equivalent. I would not venture to say whether they will be realized or not, even if I knew the latest results of geological exploration work. Let's wait until the Vostok Oil project is brought to a certain stage and we get a statement from the company," Kazanov said.

He also touched on surveys of Arctic peninsulas neighboring Taimyr, Gydan and Yamal.

"The well success rate in these regions is a very high 0.75-0.80. It's another matter that this is already exploration within the boundaries of previously discovered fields. One can say that complicating factors here are the geological structure, depth of productive horizons - more than four kilometres - and consequently high temperatures and pressure in reservoirs," Kazanov said.

The shift in focus to new oil and gas provinces should not lead to the abandonment of traditional production regions, he said.

"We need to continue to work in old regions of oil production. There is not only infrastructure here, but also accumulated environmental damage, and we need to recover all possible reserves since we started to work here at one point. This is the first principle of sustainable resource use," Kazanov said.

"The government has a three-stage strategy. Regions of current production support its current level, new oil and gas provinces will become the next phase of development, and completely new regions, like northern Yakutia or the shelf, are the distant future, which must also be supported," Kazanov said.