Salym Petroleum Development

Salym Petroleum Development N.V. (Salym Petroleum Development, Salym Petroleum, SPD) is a joint venture between Gazprom Neft and Royal Dutch Shell. The company was established in 1996 for development of the Salym group of oil fields in West Siberia. The Salym group includes three oil fields: West Salym, Upper Salym, and Vadelyp, located in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Surgut and 30 kilometres (19 mi) of Salym. Total recoverable C1 and C2 oil reserves are estimated to be 140 million tons. Total area of licenses equals to 2,141.4 kilometres (1,330.6 mi).

SPD has been involved in the integrated development of the Salym group of oil fields, including appraisal and engineering, since 2003. During this period, a major modern oilfield has been established here. Since the summer of 2006, SPD has been one of Russian petroleum companies with an annual production volume exceeding 1 million tons. In 2014 SPD produced about 6.55 million tons of oil.

Salym Petroleum Development is a 50/50 joint venture between Royal Dutch Shell and Gazprom Neft, a Russian petroleum company.

In order to ensure the 95% level of associated petroleum gas utilization on the Salym group of fields, a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) plant has been built for associated petroleum gas processing – a project that has been implemented by a partner company, Monolit LLC (Rose of the World group). The plant commissioned in May 2012 receives associated petroleum gas from Salym fields and Shapsha group of fields, RussNeft being the holder of the license for development of the latter.

Currently SPD is realizing a pilot project of enhanced oil recovery technology called ASP (from Alkali, Surfactant, Polymer). The company has been studying it since 2008. It has completed series of laboratory and field tests with impressive results. The use of the technology in a single well tracer test demonstrated the displacement of 90 percent of oil left in the formation after waterflood.

In 2014, the company drilled seven ASP wells, and started the construction of ASP mixing unit. In 2015 the company is planning to start up the experimental production. SPD is prepared to pro-cede to industrial application of the technology starting in 2018. The similarity of characteristics be-tween the fields in the region makes it possible to use this oil recovery method on other oilfields in Western Siberia. As calculated by experts, application of the ASP technology in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug will make it possible to produce additional 2.4 bln tons of oil in the next 15 years.