Oil: Heroes of Our Past ... and Present

Let us look at figures: more than 80% of all explored Russian reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal is based in the Siberian region (including West Siberia and Yakutia). Now the share of Siberia is about 70% in the production of oil, over 70% in the production of coal, and more than 90% in the production of gas! Unique Siberian reserves of most important natural energy carriers will remain Russia’s major sources of energy supply for many future decades.

Great hydrocarbon reserves in West and East Siberia were discovered in the second half of the past century with an active participation of scientists affiliated with the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SB RAS). Moreover, these discoveries were predicted by Academicians I.M. Gubkin (for West Siberia) and A. Trofimuk and his colleagues (for East Siberia) speculatively, on the basis of theoretical projections and calculations.

It is even more surprising that the scientific predictions were realized very quickly, which was typical, perhaps, only of the Soviet epoch: in 1960, the first oil gusher spouted in West Siberia — and in the next ten years large industrial deposits whose production reached hundreds of millions of tons were discovered and developed. In this field, like in no other, a fundamental principle of the SB RAS, the so-called “Lavrentyev’s triangle” — close interrelation between science and practice — was realized...

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