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.
In your opinion, which source is likely to be the most accurate in each country’s oil reserves? I see that information on this is highly variable. It just may be that it is impossible to even answer such a question.