Samotlor

The Samotlor field is located in the Nizhnevartovsk region of the Khanti—Mansiysk Autonomous District in Tyumen Region 15 km from Nizhnevartovsk. The field’s in-place reserves are currently estimated at around 7.1 billion tons, of which over 3.5 billion tons are recoverable.  Current recoverable oil reserves are estimated more than 1 billion tons. The Samotlor field covers an area of 1 752 sq km.

Development work at Samotlor began back in the 1960s. The first production well was drilled in 1969, and in less than a year the drillers had produced 5 million tones of oil. In 1980, Samotlor established an annual production record of 158.9 million tons. Thereafter, during the economic difficulties of the 1990s output contracted eight-fold.

Since development work began at Samotlor a total of 2 086 well clusters have been built. This approach resulted in the field having an unusually large number of idle wells. Since TNK-BP took over operations, however, a program of well interventions has reduced the idle well stock by 39% to its current level of about 2 109.

In turn, new technologies (horizontal drilling, sidetracking, extended reach drilling, hydraulic fracturing) have been applied to boost the active well stock almost to 8 000. In addition, a development program has been implemented at the Ust-Vakh acreage, with 283 wells drilled and reserves of over 50 million tons brought on stream. In 2009 TNK-BP plans to produce 27.8 million tons of oil from the Samotlor field. 

But TNK-BP is not stopping there: there is an active program of seismic survey work at the field. Field work is carried out each year, followed by processing and interpretation of the seismic data. 1500 sq km of seismic is to be acquired under a 3-year program to be completed in 2010. Thanks to 3D seismic, seven new oil pools have been discovered and put into development within satellite structures in the direct proximity of Samotlor’s main accumulations.

TNK-BP’s plans to invest $951 million in the Samotlor project in 2009, followed by a further $4.6 billion over the next 5 years (2010—2014). 

Over 400 contractor companies are currently active at Samotlor, the largest of which are Nizhnevartovskburneft, PetroAlliance, Integra-Burenie, Halliburton and Schlumberger Lodgelko Inc.