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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Trends in the Soviet oil and gas industry

Book ·
OSTI ID:7301533

The rising prices of energy now worrying most nations of the world have intensified interest in the Soviet oil and gas industry and its role in the world market. The United States has a special interest in the matter because of the possibility of importing natural gas from Russia and because Russia has sought U.S. assistance in overcoming some technological problems that are hampering the expansion of Soviet energy output. In many ways Soviet oil and gas problems parallel those in the United States. Declining well productivity, lagging finding rates, shifts to more costly deposits, refinery mix, these and other problems will strike a familiar note to observers of the U.S. energy scene. The growth of energy production and consumption in the USSR since 1965 reveals several trends. (1) The rate of growth of energy output has been falling, and domestic consumption and exports have roughly paralleled this downward trend. (2) Exports absorb more than 10 percent of Soviet energy output, but the share of the various energy sources varies considerably; for example, there has been a small net import of gas, but nearly 30 percent of oil output has been exported. (3) The trend toward liquid and gaseous fuels at the expense of solid fuels has continued since 1965. (4) Nuclear energy, which was a negligible element in total primary energy supply in 1970, has been growing rapidly. By 1975, it had reached 0.5 percent of all primary energy production in the USSR.

OSTI ID:
7301533
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English