From the depths of the earth

Belarusian oil workers will surpass last year’s production level: two million five thousand tonnes of hydrocarbon raw materials this year

Successful work with resources such as the subsoil of Belarus (which is geologically very complex) is what elevates our specialists to a global level. This status is particularly emphasised by the realities of recent years, when the development of unconventional reservoirs — impermeable underground hiding places storing black gold — has come to the forefront. The unique experience of Belarusian specialists was recently discussed at the scientific and practical conference Difficult but Recoverable Oil Reserves: From Appraisal to Development. The event brought together leading oil and gas companies and relevant departments from Belarus, Russia and China. Over three productive days, which included an on-site visit to the Rechitskoye field, foreign guests learned how work with hard-to-recover oil reserves is organised in our country.

Artyom Titov, cementing unit motorman of backfilling works department at Belorusneft

Strategies and tactics

Easy-to-recover oil reserves are depleting, inevitably leading to dealing with hard-to-recover ones — those unattainable with standard approaches. This problem is relevant for any oil and gas region — not just ours, where more than 50 percent of reserves are considered hard to recover. This natural trend encourages Belorusneft to extract the maximum from the subsoil.
Piotr Povzhik, Deputy General Director for Geology at Belorusneft, shared, “Over the past five years, the increase in reserves amounted to 10 million 668 thousand tonnes. Further exploration of old fields, their detailing, and in-depth investigation of new territories to find hydrocarbons is a scope of work planned for ten years ahead.”
However, exploration is only one facet of the colossal work. It is equally important to literally break down the subsoil into molecules. The Core Studies and Processing Centre at BelNIPIneft [Belarusian Oil Research and Design Institute] — a division of Belorusneft — has excelled in this. Its technical complex and the expertise of its team once made a breakthrough in working with unconventional reservoirs of the Rechitskoye field. “Research by BelNIPIneft employees helped the enterprise’s oilfield services unit find the right approach to these deposits, competently determine the drilling strategy, and select a formulation for hydraulic fracturing fluid,” recounted Piotr Povzhik.

Well Construction Management Centre at NGDU [oil and gas production department] Rechitsaneft

Every lock has its key

The road to ‘hard’ oil is difficult, too. Building horizontal wells is a necessary requirement to reach it. For Belorusneft, this is not exactly a new trick — they drilled their first well of this type back in 1991. However, the way the process of building these sites is refined year after year is a subject for a separate discussion.
Belarusian oil workers are constantly increasing the length of the horizontal sections of wells — the average length today is over two kilometres. Their construction time has been reduced dramatically, achieving maximum profitability in this area.
Manoeuvrability in the horizontal plane is provided by coiled tubing technologies — these are based on flexible pump-compressor pipes that allow various operations to be carried out underground. They are essential for hydraulic fracturing (HF) — a revolutionary technology in which Belarusian oil workers have become virtuosos. In simple terms, a huge amount of special liquid is pumped into the well — under pressure, the rock containing oil fractures and releases the hydrocarbon resource.
In 2019, Belorusneft carried out hydraulic fracturing using Plug&Perf technology and made a revolution in the oil and gas industry of the post-Soviet space. 
Denis Vorobyov, Deputy General Director for Production at Belorusneft, pointed out,

“We have successfully adapted foreign technology. We are not dependent on components from Western manufacturers. We have our own ingredients for the fracking fluid. We use quartz sand, mined by our BelKvarz subdivision in Brest Region, as a proppant, saving up to $10 million a year in this way.” 

The next stage in the development of the field is hydraulic fracturing using ZipperFrac technology. Belarusians were the first in the CIS to use it. The essence is to carry out HF operations simultaneously or sequentially in two horizontal wells located parallel to each other.

Belorusneft's hydraulic fracturing fleet at the site in Rechitsa District  

Success in virtual equivalent

Igor Shpurov, Director General of the State Commission for Mineral Reserves of the Russian Federation, told reporters on the sidelines of the conference, “From the point of view of process digitalisation, Belorusneft is one of the most advanced enterprises in the Union State, if not the entire world.” 
According to Vasily Bogach, a representative of NGDU [oil and gas production department] Rechitsaneft, digitalisation accounts for 50 percent of the success of Belarusian oil workers in the development of hard-to-recover reserves. In addition, Belorusneft is an unprecedented example of business process organisation. At the Well Construction Management Centre, under the guidance of Vasily Bogach, several dozen specialists of different profiles in an open space environment promptly oversee the work of the oil fields, “There is nothing like this anywhere else in the world. In many companies, there are separate centres for drilling, well workover, hydraulic fracturing... We have combined all these ‘universes’ into one ‘mega-universe’, which, coupled with digitalisation, allows us to streamline operations and control everything that happens in the oil fields from Western Siberia to Ecuador in real time.” 

There is more to come  

Foreign partners note not only the professionalism of Belarusian oil workers, but also their self-sufficiency, ability to provide themselves with resources for production, as well as their integration into the national economy.
Alexander Ugryumov, a representative of Gazprom Neft, underlined, “A lot of equipment and chemical reagents are produced in Belarus — this is a contribution to the country’s GDP and a big plus for the company. Gazprom Neft is interested in this experience.” 

Last year, Belorusneft extracted one million 938 thousand tonnes of black gold — a record for the previous 29 years. Such an achievement would be impossible without the development of hard-to-recover reserves, raising the professional level of oil workers, developing the technological base, as well as support from the state, in which comprehensive work with minerals is a matter of national security.

The plans for 2025 are to extract two million five thousand tonnes of hydrocarbon raw materials, and by 2030 — to increase annual production to two million 300 thousand tonnes.

DIRECT SPEECH

Aleksandr Lyakhov, General Director at Belorusneft,
“The level of our specialists and our technologies enable us to work in any corner of the world. And Belorusneft is open to new horizons. We demonstrate the enormous daily work of the team, where there are no minor details, where knowledge, professionalism, and the desire to benefit the enterprise and the country are truly valued. For us, there are no impossible tasks, and this is not just a figure of speech.” 

By Nikolai Skintiyan

Photos courtesy of Belorusneft