Oil and gas fields can self-repair

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In the early 1990s, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. As a result, a number of oil and gas fields, which were previously in long-term operation, were not developed for several years, while property issues were being resolved. At such fields, quite unexpectedly for scientists, replenishment of hydrocarbon reserves was discovered.

The first who correctly understood the essence of the phenomenon were the employees of Moscow State University: Boris Aleksandrovich Sokolov (1930-2004), head of the Department of Geology and Geochemistry of Fossil Fuels of the Geological Faculty of Moscow State University, and a member of the same department, Antonina Nikolaevna Guseva (1918-2014). In 1993, they put forward a revolutionary idea, new for oil and gas geology (see "Oil and gas deposits are not treasures, but inexhaustible sources"), stating:

Oil and gas are renewable natural resources and their development should be built on the basis of a scientifically grounded balance of hydrocarbon generation volumes and the possibility of extraction during field exploitation

Thus, for the first time, oil and gas were classified among the indestructible mineral resources of our planet, replenished during the exploitation of fields. For more than ten years, this idea has been hotly debated at all major conferences and meetings held in Russia.

Needless to say, she was immediately met with hostility by oil geologists. At first they said that this could not be. Then, that this explanation is erroneous and is caused by an incorrect calculation of stocks. However, the problem is that the new oil and gas paradigm turned out to be correct.

Moreover, in laboratory conditions, the natural physicochemical mechanism of the formation of all types of hydrocarbons from water and carbon dioxide has been experimentally reproduced. This was stated by Azariy Aleksandrovich Barenbaum, Ph. D.

At the moment, it has been proven that oil and gas fields do not resemble "treasures" that need to be found and extracted from the depths, but constantly replenishing "wells" of hydrocarbons, which must be carefully looked after, cleaned, repaired and, most importantly, not taken to the bottom and do not destroy.

There are already examples of "new" exploited deposits. One of them is the Shebelinskoye gas condensate field, the largest in Ukraine. In the early 2000s, the head of the laboratory of the Institute of Oil and Gas Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Technical Sciences Sumbat Nabievich Zakirov estimated the rate of replenishment of the reserves of this field and made recommendations not to pump out more gas from the field than is being replenished. As a result, for 15 years, the deposit clearly produces its 2.5 billion tons annually.

However, in general, the world oil and gas industry continues to use barbaric mining technologies, which not only cause enormous damage to the environment (contamination of the area, surface water and groundwater horizons with radionuclides, mercury and other heavy metals), but also lead to a violation of the integrity of geological traps and, thus By the same token, the processes of natural replenishment of oil and gas fields. If the costs of eliminating environmental damage from traditional hydrocarbon production were fully taken into account today, the global oil and gas industry would become unprofitable.

Such a situation has now developed in Scotland: due to the unprofitability of oil production on the shelf of the North Sea, a huge number of wells must be suspended. The costs involved are so great that if the government does not give oil companies a 50% tax rebate of £ 53 billion, the entire Scottish offshore oil project since the 1960s will be unprofitable.

In Russia, 350 thousand wells are next in line for conservation, and one is being preserved a year. There is a well-known disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of an accident at one (!) Well, and there are many such “Mexican gulfs”, they are simply not located in resort areas.

We invite our readers to think about the significance of this discovery in the world energy system, about what will now be with global control over the world economy.

Are there any prospects for the old oil and gas world order, in which a lot is decided by artificially maintaining ultra-high oil prices, wars in significant countries of the hydrocarbon market (Iraq, Libya, Syria), destabilization of countries through which hydrocarbon supply routes run (Ukraine, Bulgaria), sanctions (Iran, Russia)?

You can learn more about the discovery of self-healing oil and gas fields in these two articles: