Samotlor Field is the largest oil field of

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...

and the sixth largest in the world, owned and operated by

Rosneft PJSC Rosneft Oil Company ( stylized as ROSNEFT) is a Russian integrated energy company headquartered in Moscow. Rosneft specializes in the exploration, extraction, production, refining, transport, and sale of petroleum, natural gas, and petrol ...

. The field is located at

Lake Samotlor A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much lar ...

Nizhnevartovsk Nizhnevartovsk ( rus, Нижневартовск, p=nʲɪʐnʲɪˈvartəfsk) is a city in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug–Yugra, Russia. Since the 1960s, the Western Siberian oil boom led to Nizhnevartovsk's rapid growth from a small settlemen ...

district,

Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug–Yugra ( Russian and Mansi: Ханты-Мансийский автономный округ — Югра, ''Khanty-Mansiysky avtonomny okrug — Yugra;'' Khanty: Хӑнты-Мансийской Aвтономно� ...

Tyumen Oblast Tyumen Oblast (russian: Тюме́нская о́бласть, ''Tyumenskaya oblast'') is a federal subject (an oblast) of Russia. It is geographically located in the Western Siberia region of Siberia, and is administratively part of the Ura ...

. It covers . The field is

History

The field was discovered in 1965. Development started in 1967 and first oil was produced in 1969. Discovery of this field had changed

from a small nearby village into a busy oil city as Samotlor used to be the most important oil production base of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

. After breakup of the Soviet Union the field was owned by Samotlorneftgaz and TNK-Nizhnevartovsk, which later formed TNK-BP. Over the all development period a total of 2,086 well clusters (containing more than 17,000 wells) have been built and about 2.6 billion tons of oil has been produced. The peak production occurred in 1980 when Samotlor produced 158.9 million tons of oil (). The production has been in decline ever since, although according to TNK-BP the field production has stabilized over the past last years after.

Reserves

The in-place oil reserves of the Samotlor field were equal to and as of 2009 estimated at . The proven reserves are approximately . The field is 80% depleted with water-cut up tp 90%. At the end of the 1990s, production rate dropped to . However, through an aggressive exploration program and application of cutting-edge technologies TNK-BP had raised production up to . Up to 2012, TNK-BP plans to invest US$1 billion per year for maintaining oil production in it at the level of 30 million tons per year.

In media

The oil processing plant in

is the scene of (but referred to by location rather than directly by name) the beginning of

Tom Clancy's ''Tom Clancy's'' is a branding used by video game company Ubisoft for video games, some of which feature the works of American author Tom Clancy, while others do not. Various sub-series are often unrelated to each other with a few exceptions, al ...

1986 novel ''

Red Storm Rising ''Red Storm Rising'' is a war novel, written by Tom Clancy and co-written with Larry Bond, and released on August 7, 1986. Set in the mid-1980s, it features a Third World War between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Warsaw Pact force ...

''.

References

Sources

*Kramer, Andrew E. "Mapmakers and Mythmakers: Russian Disinformation Practices Obscure Even Today's Oil Fields," ''New York Times'' (1 December 2005): C1. {{Authority control Oil fields of Russia Oil fields of the Soviet Union Rosneft oil and gas fields