This new subsoil-usage category — in contrast to traditional exploration and production licenses — is intended to cover the development, testing and deployment of innovations for developing hard-to-recover oil and for enhancing oil recovery (EOR).

This mechanism will mean companies can focus on developing technologies rather than on the drilling and development commitments typical under the traditional operating model. It also simplifies procedures for drafting and approving project documentation. Establishing test sites considerably increases scope for field-testing technologies, and for their subsequent fine-tuning and roll-out at existing and future oil and gas assets.

A network of technological test sites for testing E&P solutions in developing Bazhenov and Domanic formations and Achimovsky and Paleozoic deposits is to be rolled-out across the Volga-Urals region and Western Siberia over the next few years. Open-access innovation test-sites are also be established throughout Russia, at which all oil and gas market players — from subsoil users and oilfield services companies to R&D centres and universities — will be able to test their technologies.