West Siberian Petroleum Province is the world’s largest one in terms of oil and gas resources and reserves. Gas flowing from the 1 key well in the Berezovsky site in 1953 proved the formidable potential of the province and gave start to large-scale resource development in Western Siberia. Analysis of geological exploration indicators (scope and costs) as well as the current state of licensing allows concluding that considerable progress has been made in developing the potential of Western Siberia. However, despite more than half a century of development, the lands of the unallocated subsoil fund still occupy more than half of its area (58.2%). Pace of geological exploration is obviously insufficient to maintain the resource base of West Siberian Petroleum Province. That is why there is much tension around the issue of prospecting for new objects capable of altering the situation with recessionary trends in resource potential development in West Siberian Petroleum Province. Discovery of new objects should be based on the revision of focus areas, scope and stages of geological exploration for oil and gas with priority studies in marginal zones of West Siberian Petroleum Province, which account for about 60-90% of the unallocated fund of subsurface mineral resources of the province.

Ol’ga A. Vazhenina ORCiD 
Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences,
Head of Department
ZapSibNIIGG,
48/4a, ul. Respubliki, Tyumen, 625000, Russia
e-mail: vazheninaoa@zsniigg.ru

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