Место издания: Florence , Год издания: 2004

How long will the humankind be able to use oil and gas as an energy source and raw materials? This question has been discussed so lively and widely, and opinions differ so. Some specialists suppose that oil and gas resources on the planet will probably last till the end of the 21st century. British Petroleum announced on base of its calculations that Russian oil and gas resources would last no longer than 22 years. Many surveyors and foretellers have been willingly made those estimations by help of various criteria - geological, economic, and political - including both objective and subjective factors.We would like to express our opinion too. Oil and gas will last as long as the modern humankind will last. For its progress and growth, it constantly needs bread, rice, potatoes, oil and gas. Energy and raw materials demand will ever create their supply.150 years of the history of the world's petroleum industry have shown that oil and gas resources and production on this planet are growing, although estimations of active reserves and oil and gas production levels in separate regions and countries vary. A steady tendency of extended reproduction has been observed. The growth of hydrocarbons in the Earth's crust may be explained theoretically by acceleration of their recent formation. Rapid processes of hydrate formation support that best.Powerful and avalanche-like events accompany "the birth" of oil and gas pools. Those events, as many other natural phenomena, are chaotic. But accident does not deny law.Of 40 thousand oil and gas fields known on the globe today, several hundreds are giant, large and high-producing, and determining production in separate regions and countries. Petroleum operator needs exactly such fields.Our task under market conditions is to have exploration and production reimbursed, and most profitably. Exhaustion has been observed recently in many oil and gas fields under development in West Siberia. We believe that rehabilitation measures can help make residual "hard to extract" reserves active and profitable. Global gas resources may be increased many times due to new gas-hydrate fields.