ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an enumeration of the problems that beset the Soviet petroleum industry. When the Central Intelligence Agency released its April 1977 report on Soviet oil production, the agency unleashed widespread doubts about the Soviet Union's ability to increase its oil output. Many Soviet analysts maintain that the petroleum industry has become more labor intensive, and the inability to attract workers to areas that have extremely long winters and short summers, during which much of the region turns to swamp, has meant a lot of problems for the industry. The Soviet Union has become dependent upon petroleum exports in large part because of its inability to replace oil with another hard currency earner. The fields of West Siberia are responsible for an ever-increasing share of total petroleum production. Soviet planners can continue to increase output in West Siberia in the hopes that new reserves offshore will significantly increase their petroleum reserves-to-production ratio.
