ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the potential of Soviet offshore petroleum reserves for solving the problems that beset the petroleum industry. It discusses an enumeration of the geological potential of the Soviet shelf is intended to make the reader aware of the vast petroleum reserves of the Soviet shelf as well as some of the tenuousness with which these reserves. The administration of the offshore petroleum industry, the technological requirements, and the political factors involved in deciding to go offshore are connected to this. The continental shelf of the Arctic seas and basins constitutes nearly two-thirds of the Soviet Union's total offshore area. The offshore region of the West Siberian basin is in the Kara Sea, The region was at one time thought to be extremely oil-rich. In May of 1985, the Offshore Technology Conference held a series of seminars, one of which ranked the hydrocarbon potential of the world's offshore and partly onshore-offshore reserves.
