The old Soviet refineries were rebuilt with Western investment, Western tech, and Western and know-how.
In particular, Shell, BP, and Exxon abandoned their operations in Russia immediately after the 2022 phase of Russia’s war against Ukraine started. BP wrote off $24.4 billion, Shell $4.2 billion and Exxon $4 billion in assets and investments.
The refineries they created for Russia were dependent upon supplies, parts, and maintenance from key Western companies like SLB (Schlumberger), Baker Hughes, NOV, Noble Services, and Halliburton.
Some of the key technology and expertise the Russians desperately needed was for companies that had experience with fracking. While Russian oil fields are still chugging along just fine a lot of their oil fields were tapped out but fracking would restore many of those fields to production for years to come.
In any case, the Russian oil fields and refineries, as they are currently composed, require Western made machinery, parts, and maintenance for continued operations.
The Russians are resourceful and can make some things work with home made replacements. But anything that needs to synch up with software...and even the software itself...will require Western attention and investment.
So yes, the Russians can replace these things. But first they have to rebuild the organizations, experience, and supply lines to do so. They are faced with a serious logistical challenge.
Russia’s major oil fields are Western Siberia into the Urals/Volga region, they are also down on the north shore of the Caspian — and there is a solid deposit in the far east near Sakhalin.
None of this is shale. It will not get any value from artificial fracturing. I don’t think you have a feel for permeability of rock (worth a quick read). All that fracking does is it increases permeability.
In the world of oil you will find all fields have a natural decline rate. Because all wells have a natural decline rate. You find oil, you start extracting it from a well. On day 1 you flow (call it) 10,000 barrels/day. That’s a good conventional well. At the end of 1 year, it will be flowing maybe 9990 barrels/day. Not much loss of flow.
But that decline is relentless. If you want more flow per day, you have to drive down the road a ways and drill another well. That one will flow also 10,000 barrels/day. But by the time you are done drilling and getting it online, that first well is down to whatever, 9980 barrels/day. So now you get 19980 from that field.
Every new well adds, but the old wells add less and less.
This is what all oil countries deal with. Keep adding wells. Inject seawater to was oil out of pores and bring it up. The Russians have done this for decades.
But they don’t frack. They don’t need to. Their conventional (the word conventional for oil used to mean “not offshore rigs”, now it means “not fracked”) oil fields are flowing 9.5 mbpd and they can flow 11 mbpd. They throttled back as part of the OPEC+ agreement.
Note that paragraph above about flow rates. The big difference between shale and conventional is shale wells die vertically. They start at about 1000 barrels/day and at the end of the year they are at 600 barrels/day. Then the next year 400. Then 300. You get the picture. Conventional wells with natural permeability last for decades. Shale wells with artificial permeability (fracking) die in about 5-10 yrs.
For Russia, their 9.5 mbpd doesn’t really matter because their domestic consumption is only about 5 mbpd.
Now then — they have the Bazhenov Shale. This is a region of rock formation south of the Kara Sea. The IEA says it holds 1.2 Trillion (with a T) barrels of oil, the largest hydrocarbon rock formation in the world. It’s shale so it will have to be fracked. It hasn’t even been touched yet.
When they need to, they will, but that will be some time in the future. Their conventional fields can maintain production via more in field drilling for, oh, call it 10 years.
As for requiring western expertise to do fracking, nah. What western expertise would do is enable fracking to be more efficient. But when you have 1.2 Trillion barrels, you don’t really care if you leave some behind. Your total is somewhat infinite so inefficient fracking will flow comfortably, and leaving some behind means it is still there.