Volga-Ural Petroleum and Gas Province

Last updated July 09, 2024

The Volga-Ural Petroleum and Gas Province, also known as the Volga-Ural Petroleum and Gas Basin, is a geographical region in southern Russia. Stretching from the west bank of the Volga to the western Ural Mountains, the province contains sizeable quantities of oil and natural gas.

In parts the Volga-Ural Petroleum and Gas Province coincides with the Middle-Urals Ring Structure.

Description

The province is a large geographical region in Russia. The province is found in roughly the same area as another geographic feature, the Volga-Uralic region, a broad anticline formed between western bank of the Volga river and the western slopes of the Ural Mountains. The region is further divided into three sub-regions; the Perm-Bashkir arch forms the northern border of the region, the Zhigulevsko-Orenburg arch forms the southern border, with the Tartar arch separating the two. Between all of the major arches are a series of depressions (downwarps) in the earth. In addition, the region's mineral makeup has allowed for a series of seven large aquifers to form - the largest concertation of water is found in the eastern part of the province where the underwater channels meet the western slopes of the Ural Mountains. The region's primary drainage basin is near the north coast of the Caspian Sea.^[1]

The Volga-Ural province is formed by a variety of different geological layers. The bottom of the province is made up of crystalline earth formed during the Archean Eon (4.0 to 2.5 Gya). On top of this layer are younger layers consisting of various materials, including sandstone, shale, organic forms of carbonate, and other conglomerated mineral beds. Many of the upper layers of the region are composed of marine-based materials formed by the extinction of the ancient Ural Ocean and Permian Sea. Notably, the varied remnants of seas from the Jurassic and Triassic periods - found in other parts of Russia - are not widely present in the region.^[1]

The geological history and mineral makeup of the province made it conducive to the formation of oil and natural gas, and the region currently contains large quantities of these fossil fuels. These reserves make the economic exploitation of the region viable; according to one source, as of 1983 there were around 600 oil and gas fields in the region with another 2000 smaller pools.^[1] The province saw limited interest until the 1940s, when the outbreak of World War II saw a larger amount of investment in the region. Economic investment in the province's extraction industries greatly increased in the 1950s, were reduced in the 1980s, and continue into the present day.^[1]^[2] Notable oil fields in the region include Romashkino Oil Field. The cities of Syzran, Perm, Ufa, Kuybyshev, and Orenburg all lay within the borders of the province.^[1] A series of pipelines transport oil extracted from the region to various destinations in Russia.^[3]

Related Research Articles

Russia is the largest country in the world, covering over 17,125,192 km² (6,612,074 sq mi), and encompassing more than one-eighth of Earth's inhabited land area. Russia extends across eleven time zones, and has the most borders of any country in the world, with sixteen sovereign nations.

The Ural Mountains, or simply the Urals, are a mountain range in Eurasia that runs north–south mostly through the Russian Federation, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to the river Ural and northwestern Kazakhstan. The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia, marking the separation between European Russia and Siberia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a further continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The average altitudes of the Urals are around 1,000–1,300 metres (3,300–4,300 ft), the highest point being Mount Narodnaya, which reaches a height of 1,894 metres (6,214 ft).

Perm, previously known as Yagoshikha and Molotov, is the administrative centre of Perm Krai in the European part of Russia. It sits on the banks of the Kama River near the Ural Mountains, covering an area of 799.68 square kilometres. With over one million residents Perm is the 15th-largest city in Russia and the 5th-largest in the Volga Federal District.

The Alaska North Slope is the region of the U.S. state of Alaska located on the northern slope of the Brooks Range along the coast of two marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean, the Chukchi Sea being on the western side of Point Barrow, and the Beaufort Sea on the eastern. With the exception of the highway connecting Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay, the region is disconnected from the rest of the Alaskan road system and relies mostly on waterways and small airports for transportation due to the Brooks Range secluding the region from the rest of the state.

This is a list of all articles related to geology – Scientific study of the composition, structure, and history of Earth that cannot be readily placed on the following subtopic pages:

Ural Economic Region is one of twelve economic regions of Russia. This prominent industrial region consists of the following subdivisions : Bashkortostan (Ufa), Chelyabinsk Oblast (Chelyabinsk), Kurgan Oblast (Kurgan), Orenburg Oblast (Orenburg), Perm Krai (Perm), Sverdlovsk Oblast (Yekaterinburg) and Udmurt Republic (Izhevsk). It is mostly located in the Central, and partly in the Southern and Northern parts of the Urals, but also includes parts of the East European and West Siberian Plains. Its extent is different from that of the Ural Federal District; Bashkortostan, Orenburg Oblast, Perm Krai and Udmurtia are in the Volga Federal District while the other three are in the Ural Federal District.

Perm Krai is a federal subject of Russia, located in Eastern Europe. Its administrative center is Perm. The population of the krai was 2,532,405.

Siberian natural resources refers to resources found in Russian Siberia, in the North Asian Mainland. The Siberian region is rich in resources, including coal, oil and metal ores.

Ural is a geographical region located around the Ural Mountains, between the East European and West Siberian plains. It is considered a part of Eurasian Steppe, extending approximately from the North to the South; from the Arctic Ocean to the end of the Ural River near Orsk city. The border between Europe and Asia runs along the Eastern side of the Ural Mountains. Ural mostly lies within Russia but also includes a small part of Northwestern Kazakhstan. This is historical, not an official entity, with borders overlapping its Western Volga and Eastern Siberia neighboring regions. At some point in the past, parts of the currently existing Ural region were considered a gateway to Siberia, or even Siberia itself, and were combined with the Volga administrative the divisions. Today, there are two official namesake entities: the Ural Federal District and the Ural economic region. While the latter follows the historical borders, the former is a political product; the District omits Western Ural and includes Western Siberia instead.

The Caspian Depression or the Caspian Lowland is a low-lying flatland region encompassing the northern part of the Caspian Sea, the largest enclosed body of water on Earth. It is the larger northern part of the wider Aral-Caspian Depression around the Aral and Caspian Seas.

Karachaganak Field is a gas condensate field about 23 kilometres (14 mi) east of Aksay (Ақсай) in northwest Kazakhstan. It was once a massive Permian and Carboniferous reef complex covering an area 30 by 15 square kilometres. At its largest point, the reservoir contains a gas column 1,450 metres (4,760 ft) deep with a 200 metres (660 ft) deep oil rim below it. It is estimated to contain 1.2 trillion cubic metres of gas and one billion tonnes of liquid condensate and crude oil. Discovered in 1979, it began production under Karachaganakgazprom, a subsidiary of Gazprom. In 1992, AGIP and British Gas were awarded sole negotiating rights, forming a partnership company. In 1997, Texaco and Lukoil signed a 40-year production sharing agreement with the original two companies and the Kazakhstan government to develop the field for world markets. The agreement was turned under a partnership company known as Karachaganak Petroleum Operating (KPO) where Royal Dutch Shell and ENI are joint operators with a 29.25% stake each in the company, and with Chevron and Lukoil owning 18% and 13.5% respectively. In September 2009 the KPO filed an arbitration case against Kazakhstan. The Republic of Kazakhstan appointed Maksat Idenov to lead the negotiations, after which the arbitration was suspended towards an amicable settlement of the dispute and KazMunayGas engaged in entrance into the project in 2010. Under the terms of an agreement reached on December 14, 2011, the Republic of Kazakhstan has acquired through KazMunayGas a 10% stake for $2 billion cash and $1 billion non-cash consideration.

Kargaly is a copper mining-metallurgical district in the southern Urals of Russia. Prehistoric sites in Kargaly form a large and unique complex, especially when compared to neighboring metal production centers or the more distant ancient centers that emerged on the vast territory of the northern half of the Eurasian continent or supercontinent during the 5th to 2nd millennia BCE[1-8].

The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, often described as the world's largest lake and sometimes referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia, south of the fertile plains of Southern Russia in Eastern Europe, and north of the mountainous Iranian Plateau. It covers a surface area of 371,000 km² (143,000 sq mi), an area approximately equal to that of Japan, with a volume of 78,200 km³ (19,000 cu mi). It has a salinity of approximately 1.2%, about a third of the salinity of average seawater. It is bounded by Kazakhstan to the northeast, Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the southwest, Iran to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southeast.

The geology of Russia, the world's largest country, which extends over much of northern Eurasia, consists of several stable cratons and sedimentary platforms bounded by orogenic (mountain) belts.

Perm Governorate, also known as the Governorate of Perm, was an administrative-territorial unit (guberniya) of the Russian Empire and the Russian SFSR from 1781 to 1923. It was located on both slopes of the Ural Mountains, and its administrative center was the city of Perm. The region gave its name to the Permian period.

Kadir Rakhimovich Timergazin was a Soviet petroleum geologist and a professor of geological-mineralogical science.

The West Siberian petroleum basin is the largest hydrocarbon basin in the world covering an area of about 2.2 million km², and is also the largest oil and gas producing region in Russia.

The Azerbaijan is a country with very favorable natural conditions and rich natural resources. Snowy peaks, high mountains, foothill fertile soils, wide plains, Lowest Land Points Below Ocean Level are the main landscape forms of the republic. This complex landscape structure has resulted in a variety of natural conditions, climate, soil-vegetation, and water resources. This, in turn, led to the uneven distribution of population and farms on the territory, and the specialization of production on different types.

The Alaskan North Slope (ANS) is a foreland basin located on the northern edge of the Brooks Range. The Alaska North Slope is bounded on the north by the Beaufort Sea and runs from the Canadian border to the maritime boundary with Russia in the west. The western edge extends into the Chukchi Sea and Chukchi platform where the basin is at its widest. As the basin moves east it narrows towards the Canadian border. The basin is 1000 km long, 600 km at its widest, and covers a total area of 240,000 km².

The Volga–Ural interfluve is a steppe, semidesert, and desert territory between rivers Volga and Ural in Kazakhstan and Russia.

References

1 2 3 4 5 Peterson, James A.; Clarke, James W. (1983). Geology of the Volga-Ural petroleum province and detailed description of the Ramashkino and Arlan oil fields (Report). Open-File Report 83-711. United States Geological Survey. doi:10.3133/ofr83711.
↑ Kontorovich, A. E.; Eder, L. V.; Filimonova, I. V.; Mishenin, M. V.; Nemov, V. Yu (2016-12-01). "Oil industry of major historical centers of the Volga-Ural petroleum province: past, current state, and long-run prospects". Russian Geology and Geophysics. 57 (12): 1653–1667. Bibcode:2016RuGG...57.1653K. doi:10.1016/j.rgg.2016.10.011. ISSN 1068-7971.
↑ "Volga-Ural Petroleum and Gas Province". Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Retrieved 2020-11-08.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[:0-1] 1 2 3 4 5 Peterson, James A.; Clarke, James W. (1983). Geology of the Volga-Ural petroleum province and detailed description of the Ramashkino and Arlan oil fields (Report). Open-File Report 83-711. United States Geological Survey. doi:10.3133/ofr83711.

[2] Kontorovich, A. E.; Eder, L. V.; Filimonova, I. V.; Mishenin, M. V.; Nemov, V. Yu (2016-12-01). "Oil industry of major historical centers of the Volga-Ural petroleum province: past, current state, and long-run prospects". Russian Geology and Geophysics. 57 (12): 1653–1667. Bibcode:2016RuGG...57.1653K. doi:10.1016/j.rgg.2016.10.011. ISSN 1068-7971.

[3] "Volga-Ural Petroleum and Gas Province". Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias. Retrieved 2020-11-08.

[1]

[2]

[3]