20d a1. Organization of Russian logging businesses Brian Moss Moss Petrophysics Lid ‘The centralized system of control whereby the busi- ness activities of the logging industry within a given region were administered through Moscow commit tees in the Ministries of Oil and Gas Industries, to who all regions were accountable, was typical of the management of many industries under the Communist regime. Subsequently, the upper levels of the manage: ment hierarchy have altered, both in their size and in their roles. but the practical arrangements at the local and even regional level have remained much as they always were. Wireline logging activities, encompassing both tool design and manufacture and data acquisition and inter- pretation. continue to be the responsibility of the local Geophysical Amalgamation’. The Ministry of Oil Industry now provides a coordination and logistics service to the regional Geophysical Amalgamations in whom the day-to-day management responsibility is vested, Former centres of excellence in design, manu facturing and interpretation development continue to provide specialist expertise to these regional Amalgamations. Regional ‘Production Amalgamations’ seem not to be involved with wireline logging, rather they are the clients of the logging service groups. Boreholes are drilled for # variety of reasons and both the well objectives and local geological condi- tions would dictate the composition of the logging pro- gramme in each case. Minimum logging suites run in the majority of wells typically comprise electrical, caliper, temperature and gamma-ray devices, in some regions being augmented by neutron-gamma and pos- sibly density and/or acoustic porosity measurements. These minimum logging suites tend to be smaller than ‘would be run in Europe and, except for the omission of an explicit porosity tool, they are comparable with those run over 15 years ago onshore in the USA), So- called ‘parametric wells” have a rather more complete suite of open-hole surveys run in both water-based and oil-based mud systems. These wells were the testing ground for determining appropriate interpretation methods and parameters. Mud logging as practised in the West is not performed routinely. MWD equipment may exist in prototypes but appears not to be widely used in surveys. In general, presentation of log data has not had the benefit of sophisticated plotting equipment routinely employed in the West. As a consequence, most log hardcopies are black and white and hand edited with details of scale changes, etc.; furthermore, they tend to combine many log curves onto a few plot tracks which can tender the resulting product difficult to under- stand, ‘The former arrangements See Figs 1.1 and 1.2 for ‘organograms’. Under the Communist government the oil industry was managed by three ministries located in Moscow: @ The Ministry of Geology (responsible for “prospecting” activities) © The Ministry of Gas Industry @ The Ministry of Oil Industry Oil and Gas prospects were commonly identified through seismic studies and confirmed by the bit in wildcat wells, These wells were drilled by the geolog- ical institutes, known as Geologia. After the initial discovery, fields were appraised by further ‘research’ wells which generally were extensively evaluated, providing data for the preparation of TEOs (‘technical economic basis of organization’). These reports would comprise sections on estimated original hydrocarbons in place and reserves, proposed development plans and estimated project economics. Reserve estimates ‘were submitted to the Ministry of Geology in Moscow for certification. Once certified, the responsibility for 4 field typically shifted to the local “Production Amalgamation’ (Neft) who would drill production and development wells and build all the infrastructure to recover and transport the oil/gas from the field. Although each of the above ministries administered separate wireline logging services (and design and support activities), the largest concentration of log- aging effort took place under the responsibility of the oil ministry by virtue of there being a much larger number of development and producing wells drilled ‘compared to ‘exploration and appraisal’ wells. A min- istry comprised various ‘boards’ each managing a par- ticular business area such as drilling, production, transportation and geology. (Here, geology in the oil and gas ministries is presumed to refer to produc- tion/appraisal geology.) Included amongst the Ministry of Oil Industry Boards was the Oil Production and Field Geophysical