Increase in the share of hard-to-recover oil reserves – a situation that all Russian oil companies face, including Tatneft – makes the companies to actively improve their activities from drilling to oil production and well workover.

One of the most relevant tasks in the near term is search for and exploration of alternative fuel sources, and producing from such sources to the extent that will allow offsetting the growing deficit in conventional oil production. Nonconventional oils also include shale oil. When drilling in different areas of the Romashkinskoye field, oil seepage and oil pools were detected in the Givetian, Kynovian, Domanic, Mendymian, Dankov- Lebedyan and Zavolzhye horizons that belong to shale deposits.

When testing those horizons, water or drilling mud filtrate without direct evidence of oil was produced. However, after studying the composition of gases in the water sample we revealed the objects that have characteristics of formations with the signs of oil and formations with the presence of oxygenated oil. It is presumed that such objects might be considered as possible hydrocarbon traps.

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