OREANDA-NEWS. April 06, 2010. Geological exploration is the dream, the love and the fate of thousands of people — one of the most romantic professions of the Soviet period. People became geologists not for money but, in the words of the song, “for the mist and the smell of the taiga” That’s what it used to be like. But what’s it like nowadays?

“In the winter the bears are usually asleep, and the moose move away because of the noise we make” say the geologists. Instead of tents they now have warm trailers with satellite television; instead of a camp fire they have electric heating. The day-to-day life of a geologist has changed a lot over the past few decades.

“Nowadays the romance is not just about walking around with a hammer, a tent on your shoulders and a rucksack – these are inseparable parts of any geologist’s job. The tools we use are new technologies and seismic. These have a romance of their own, because in a geological section we can see how a basin has evolved over time and where we might find oil”, says Inessa Varshavskaya, TNK-BP’s Vice President for Exploration. “Seismic surveys are the eyes of the geologist, enabling him to see the internal structure of the earth, and in some cases even actual accumulations of oil and gas themselves,” says Viktor Matusesvich, a worker TNK-BP’s Seismic Studies Department.

Geologists often use the same terms as the military: surveys, explosives that are handled by explosives officers – specially trained engineers that work in each brigade. The drilling vehicle drills a borehole 16 metres into the earth and a charge weighing 320 grams is lowered in. “It takes about 15—20 minutes to load one borehole; in an hour a crew can load 3—4 holes. If they do more they get tired. So that makes 30 holes a day. If they really push it, they can do up to 36, but then they’re likely to do less the next day”, explains Yuriy Yarin, Chief Seismic Specialist in TNK-BP’s Exploration Department.

The shock wave helps to map out the contours of the underground layers with different densities. The information is recorded by 240 special sensors connected by a cable over a distance of 6 km. The data are then fed into a mobile seismic station. The result is a flat cross-section of the earth. But this is seismic as it used to be. These days, scientists have already learned how to image the underground kingdom in volumetric format – in 3D. “Without building a 3D model, without three-dimensional data it would be impossible to understand how a reservoir is constructed, how the formation is arranged and what its properties are, which would make it impossible to select the right well locations for drilling”, says Lyudmila Ivanova, Chief Specialist in TNK-BP’s Exploration Division.

In the visualization and modeling centre they put together an underground picture of the field. The green lines on the screen are the wells. There can be hundreds of these in just one area. The main thing is to locate the drill rigs correctly, because each well costs a huge amount of money.

The drilling success rate after a thorough seismic survey is 74 per cent. This means that three of every four wells usually penetrate an oil-bearing layer. The fourth well is dry, though not useless. It helps to understand the configuration of the petroleum formation, the structure of the rocks, their composition and properties – from the surface down to a depth of two and a half kilometers.

With each passing year there are fewer and fewer large oil and gas fields — fields like Samotlor, for example, which has an area twice the size of Moscow. So the geologists are forced to hunt for small and medium-sized pools. “We’re looking for structures measuring 3—4 km2. Finding these at a depth of 3—4 km is very difficult; it’s rocket science”, says Oleg Bakuev, Director of TNK-BP’s Exploration Department.

Helicopters are indispensible things for geologists – they can’t survey the taiga on foot, after all. And to cut out the extraneous noise during the flight there are headphones, almost like the pilot’s. Two hours east of Tobolsk and the helicopter is at the Ust-Tegusskoe field. From the air you can see the openings cut in the forest to get the vehicles through and set up the seismic equipment. “To get a three-dimensional picture the cuttings are in the form of a grid – for tens of kilometres around. The Uvat project is one of the most promising in Russia. “Sixteen new oil fields and one new gas field, the beginning of oil production in the south of Tyumen region and beyond. The company is working hard and moving northwards towards the border with Krasnoyarsk region”, notes Bakuev.

Explorers are people who know how to spend money. The producers produce the oil and we spend the money. But this money creates the base on which the company will exist 10 years from now and beyond”, says Varshavskaya.

The geologists’ camp here is known as the “crew”. To entertain them they have television, a club room and a sauna. The man in charge warns us straight away that the camp is dry. “My restaurant’s a very expensive one. It’s cheaper to buy a return ticket to Moscow. And I don’t just punish people with big fines, I sack them too”, explains Valeriy Rytsev, a crew leader at Bashneftegeofizika.

The nearest shop is 250 km away! All the workers are men, except for the professional cooks. They come here from Bashkiria for 4 moths to look for oil and gas. They live here without their families and without women”. “We just put up with it and do the job. I usually take refuge in books”, says Rytsev. “The working conditions are enormously hard. When they take on new staff 20 per cent give up straight away”, says Shamil Garayshin, Deputy General Director of Bashneftegeofizika.

According to Garayshin, the ideal worker is a man from the countryside who knows what hard work means. They work in the taiga until May, when the midge season begins. “They work here during the winter. In the summer they go back home to their families. And then towards autumn, when snow begins to fall, their wives tell them it’s time to get back to the field. My wife is always pleased to see me going off to the field, says the geologist.

Whether they find oil land gas here or not will determine whether the camp remains or whether it will move on to a new location in time. It could exist here for many years and grow. “Some people think exploration is just about discovering a field and that’s it. In fact, geology’s about following through each stage of a field’s life and cycle, from exploration and production, all the way to full depletion and abandonment”, says Aleksandr Kulik, Director of TNK-Uvat’s Exploration and Subsoil Use Department. 

In The Tyumen Petroleum Research Centre they store core samples from one third of all the oil fields in Russia – a total of 80 km of rock. The Centre’s director, Igor Dyaknov, can tell you in 60 seconds the history of an oil formation that is half a million years old. He says that he himself once became a geologist for the romance: “The enjoyable thing is suddenly seeing in your head a picture of what lies beneath the surface. You begin to understand the reasons for things, how things formed. It’s really impressive. We have the opportunity to come here straight from college and discover a field that will be linked to your name. It’s a unique opportunity “The conditions these days are more comfortable and the equipment is more advanced. The communications are better. Tents are a thing of the past, but the romance is still there”, says field manager Yevgeniy Timofeev with conviction.