Potential of High-Carbon Domanik (Upper Devonian) Shale Deposits: Timan-Pechora Oil and Gas Province Assessment

The development of oil and gas production technologies has made it possible to take a new look at the prospects of increasing the raw material base of oil in areas with developed production infrastructure. The projects of exploration and preparation for development of high-carbon low-permeability strata, primarily shale formations, occupy a special position today, as the world experience has shown their potential for oil and gas production. High-carbon shale formations are widely spread in Russia. The most significant of them include the Bazhenov Formation of Western Siberia and the Domanik sediments of the Eastern European Platform, the hydrocarbon potential of which is estimated ambiguously. The ambiguity of hydrocarbon potential estimation is related to the uneven distribution of organic matter determined by the variability of sedimentation conditions. The paper presents the results of the study of Upper Devonian sediments, based on analytical geochemical data of well cores and extracts of bitumoids from them. The analysis of the confinement of zones of increased concentration of organic matter to certain sedimentary conditions and facies zones made it possible to estimate the volume of mobile hydrocarbons in the amount of 5.3 billion tonnes preserved in the high carbonaceous strata. The obtained data on HC volumes were compared with the reservoir properties, studied using X-ray tomography, of low-permeability hydrocarbon-bearing clay-siliceous strata, which allowed us to consider the Upper Devonian carbonaceous strata as an important reserve for maintaining oil production in the future in one of the developed oil-producing regions of the European part of Russia.