Reuters: The Big One: Russia's Bazhenov shale
As U.S. and EU policymakers have imposed targeted sanctions on Russian individuals and firms in response to the crisis in Ukraine, Western companies have sought to insulate their own projects from the political imbroglio and continue developing the country’s vast oil and gas resources.
Exxon Mobil and Shell have joint ventures with Rosneft and Gazprom respectively to explore and produce shale oil and gas from beneath the swampy plains of Western Siberia and both want to be allowed to continue operating there.
It’s easy to see why. The West Siberian basin is the largest petroleum basin in the world, covering 2.2 million square kilometers between the Ural Mountains and Yenisei River, extending from Kazakhstan in the south to under parts of the Kara Sea in the north.
The region contains dozens of super-giant and giant oilfields, including Samotlor with 28 billion barrels of oil originally in place, and Urengoy with more than 350 trillion cubic feet of original gas reserves.