TOMSK, Feb 12 – RIA Tomsk. The volume of oil and condensate production in the Tomsk region in 2019 should exceed 10 million tons; oil companies are planning to allocate 5.6 billion rubles this year to work on finding new deposits in the region, the deputy governor for industrial policy Igor Shaturny told reporters on Tuesday.
Earlier it was reported that oil production volumes in the Tomsk region declined for several years. If in 2014 in the region were produced 10.8 million tons of oil, then in 2017 - 9.8 million tons were extracted.
According to Shaturny, the share of the oil and gas industry provides 30% of the gross regional product. In 2018, oil and condensate production in the Tomsk region amounted to 9.8 million tons, gas production - 6.5 billion cubic meters. In addition, in 2018, four deposits of oil were discovered, 3.5 billion rubles were spent on geological exploration activities.
"The main task which the governor sets before the oil and gas complex - is to stay at the bar of 10 million tons of oil and condensate production ... Our plans for 2019 are - to exceed this bar", - Shaturny said at the press conference.
He added that without exploration works it is impossible to increase the volume of oil production, therefore, in 2019, oil companies plan to allocate 5.6 billion rubles to them.Earlier it was reported that in 2025, oil production in the region could be reduced to 5 million tons per year. To avoid this, in March 2018, the leaders of Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) and the "Gazprom Neft-Vostok" company (subsidiary of "Gazprom Neft") signed the agreement to carry out research for the "Paleozoy" ("Paleozoic") project on the development of hard-to-recover oil reserves in the Tomsk region.