There will be enough oil in Russia for as many years as the demand for it remains. This was announced on September 4 by Sergey Kolobanov, Deputy Head of the Economics of Fuel and Energy Sectors Department of the Center for Strategic Research.
“In the extreme case, there are still technologies for obtaining synthetic liquid fuels from other resources (gas, coal), which are uncompetitive in the current economic conditions, but may well be used,” he is quoted as saying. “RIA News”.
According to the expert, the main consumer of oil products is cars with internal combustion engines, and there is already a trend in the world to replace them with electric cars.
If the current level of oil production is maintained at about 500 mln tons per year, Russia’s raw materials may last for at least 20 years, and for a maximum of 40. However, these figures may change, since exploration work does not stop, oil reserves are replenished annually.
In addition, new methods of production intensification are being developed to raise the predicted oil recovery factor and increase the recoverable reserves of already developed fields without exploring new ones, the analyst noted.
As for gas, according to Kolobanov, it has more optimistic long-term prospects, since it is considered a transitional fuel.
“In terms of gas, Russia is provided with even greater reserves and resources – more than 74 trillion cubic meters of recoverable reserves and about 190 trillion cubic meters of probable resources. It is believed that this will be enough for 80-100 years of production. At the same time, gas is one of the main fuels for generating electricity, the demand for which will only grow due to the development of electric vehicles,” the economist concluded.
Earlier, in May, the head of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources, Alexander Kozlov, estimated Russia’s oil reserves at 59 years, and natural gas at 103 years. At the same time, he noted that somewhere there are deposits that are being released, and there are those that have not yet received their full load.
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