Oil reserves up by 2.1m tonnes in 2022 – official

March 29, BPN. Belarus’ discovery of a number of oil fields in 2022 resulted in a total increase of oil reserves by 2.1 million tonnes, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection’s main natural resources directorate head, Vasil Kołb, has told BPN at a news conference.

This way, oil reserves increased by 390,000 tonnes last year, as compared to 2021.

“The country probably hadn’t seen such an increase in the last 10 years,” Kołb said. The task is to make sure that the increase in discovered reserves exceeds production, he added.

According to the natural resources official, the Viarchleśsie deposit (Homiel region’s Śvietłahorsk district) is considered promising.

“We got a commercial inflow in the Viarchleśsie oil field. Maybe not much, but the oil was pumped from the well, and there are prospects for Biełarusnafta to work on it in the future,” said Kołb.

The country produced 1.81 million tonnes of oil in 2022. On January 1, 2021, the ministry of natural resources estimated its commercial reserves at 44.6 million t.

An increase in oil production to 3-3.5 million t/yr would allow Belarus to forget “about any dependence,” said Alaksandr Łukašenka on September 6, 2021. “I am very interested in and excited about the Prypiać Trough. My gut tells me that we have oil there, we just don’t see it,” he said.