31-07-01 Russia's Energy Minister Igor Yusufov told that Russia's oil and gas reserves were not growing fast enough to keep up with demand for heating and power. At present, he said, oil and gas companies are mostly exploiting old fields discovered during the Soviet period. Assuming that exploration work at potential new deposits continues at the current pace, Russian fields contain only enough oil and gas to meet domestic demand for 15-20 years, he claimed.

Reserve estimates are sure to rise once development of promising areas such as the Timan-Pechora province and eastern Siberia begins in earnest, he said. Nevertheless, the argument can be made that Russian power plants would do better to switch to coal, he said. Russia's coal reserves are large enough to keep the power stations that now burn gas or fuel oil running for another 2,000 years, even if expected increases in demand are taken into account, he declared.
He said, though, that a switch to coal would probably not happen unless the Russian government made it a matter of policy. At present, gas is the primary fuel for Russia's power-generating industry.