Substandard Carbonate Reservoirs of the Timan-Pechora Oil and Gas Province and Their Development Prospects

Currently, up to 75% of recoverable oil reserves of the oil balance of the Russian Federation are characterized as hard-to-recover. The biggest part of these reserves are concentrated in low-permeability reservoirs - up to 44%. The largest hydrocarbon deposits of the Timan-Pechora province have been explored and are in development. The oil reserves growth from newly discovered fields (most of them are small) does not renew extracted oil and gas. The hard-to-recover oil resources are already dominated in the structure of the mineral resource base of the Timan-Pechora province. The oil extraction of hard-to-recover resources is increasing due to the application of modern technologies, however the rate of growth of these reserves exceeds the rate of production. A large proportion of hydrocarbons confined to the deposits with unfavorable reservoirs remains unrecovered regardless of the mode of development. High rates of development of scientific and technical ideas in petroleum geology allow us to pass to the development and exploitation of carbonate reservoirs with substandard parameters of porosity and permeability through integrated high-tech methods of development, which makes it possible to substantially increase the resource base of hydrocarbons in areas with developed oil infrastructure. Involvement of substandard reservoirs in the development requires new approaches to their prospecting and forecasting. In order to identify criteria for the forecast of such objects a comprehensive study of rocks with low permeability reservoir parameters should be carried out at different depths by means of geological, geophysical, lithological and petrophysical methods.