Russia’s embarrassment of riches

With the world’s largest reserves of conventional gas, the country can afford to leave shale gas in the ground

As Russia’s conventional reservoirs mature, shale will be critical to the country’s future production – of oil, that is. The Bazhenov shale-oil formation, in Western Siberia, is a world-class deposit, with about 75 billion barrels of recoverable oil thought to be within reach. Some estimates put the figure at 1 trillion barrels, suggesting the source rock dwarfs the US’ Bakken. ExxonMobil and Rosneft are about to begin fracking it. Shale gas reserves are big, too. The US’ Energy Information Administration says Russia has 285 trillion cubic feet (cf) of recoverable shale gas. But that figure only covers the Bazhenov and the data were too sparse to offer a telling figure from several other str