Energy in the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union has vast reserves of all of the main fuels, including uranium. There are no published official Soviet statistics and figures are therefore difficult to check, but it appears that about one-quarter of the world reserves of gas and oil and one-sixth of the coal and brown coal lie in Soviet territory. 

Oil around the Caspian Sea has been traditionally the mainstay of Soviet oil production. However, these fields are becoming exhausted. The major production in the years 1950-80 was in the Urals where the deposits were in large fields and recovery was inexpensive. Currently production from this field too has begun to fall off and over half of Soviet oil now comes from the West Siberian field. Conditions here are not so favourable, as the deposits are in relatively small fields and the capital costs associated with opening new areas are extremely high. 

The main gas fields lie well to the north of the oil fields and here again each new field costs more to exploit than did the earlier ones. The gas pipelines have been a major industrial success and there is considerable reserve capacity. 

Oil and gas exports form a major source of Soviet hard currency. The need of the USSR for hard currency for import requirements is likely to increase as the drive to improve the standard of living gathers momentum. In 1985 oil exports provided 60% of Soviet hard 

Because exploration and capital costs are so high, it is forecast that Soviet oil exports are likely to fall during the next 15 years. Gas exports are likely to expand and there is spare capacity in the pipelines, but not enough to offset the fall in revenue from oil exports. 

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