OREANDA-NEWS. PJSC LUKOIL finished an evaluation and independent audit of its oil and gas reserves as of December 31, 2015. The evaluation was performed in accordance with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) standards until the economic limit of commercial production is reached.

The audit results by Miller and Lents, a US firm, suggest that the Company's proved hydrocarbon reserves as of December 31, 2015 came to 16.6 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe), including 12.6 billion barrels (bbl) of oil and 23.8 trillion cubic feet of gas.

The evaluation was performed given that the situation on the global product and raw material markets had deteriorated drastically. According to the standards, the Company's reserves were estimated based on the average oil quotations for 12 months of 2015, as of the 1st day of each month. Thus, the Urals oil price came to USD 52.8/bbl as compared to USD 100.1/bbl the year before. A 1.9-fold oil price drop affected the economic feasibility as to the development of some of the Company's reserves; as a result, 644 million boe of proved reserved were transferred to lower categories. As soon as the economic situation improves, the Company expects these hydrocarbon volumes to return to the proved reserves category.

Proved reserves increased due to geological exploration and related discoveries, as well as production drilling in the conventional regions of the Company's presence in Russia and abroad, and totaled 548 million boe.

The Company also completed an estimate of the contingent resources according to the PRMS classification. The contingent resources of the 3C** category totaled 13.9 billion boe as of December 31, 2015. An increase in the contingent resources by 1.9 billion boe as compared to 2014 is a result of efficient geologic exploration in the Baltic shelf area, West Siberia, the Komi Republic, as well as of the transfer of some of the reserves to the contingent resources category.

The oil and gas volumes currently classified as contingent resources are expected to be transferred to the reserves pool due to nearing the commissioning dates, progress in the implementation of the gas utilization program, completion of pilot operations, and application of new highly efficient techniques, enabling cost-effective development of hard-to-recover reserves.

In terms of proved hydrocarbon reserves, LUKOIL retains its leading positions among Russian and international companies.