GLOBALSHIFT - Europe (Eastern)

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Capital

Population

Land (sq kms)

Oil prod (000s b/d)

Gas prod (bcm/yr)

Oil cons (000s b/d)

Gas cons (bcm/yr)

n/a

299 mm

19,001,197

11,029

611

4,833

496

The 13 countries of Eastern Europe listed by Globalshift include Russia (with Asian territory of Siberia and the Far East), which is by far the dominant producing country in the region.

Russia has a long history of oil and gas production, at first from the Caucasus and the Volga-Urals basins, west of the Urals Mountains, and later from Siberia. The Caspian, Black and Baltic Seas also have some potential whilst Arctic basins, on and offshore, and shale beds represent new frontiers.

Old producing areas are present in Poland, and in Romania, Hungary and Ukraine all of which have offshore potential, especially for gas in shallow and deep waters of the Black Sea

The remaining countries in Eastern Europe, apart from Latvia, have seen a little oil or gas output, mostly from onshore areas, although Bulgaria also has potential in the Black Sea and Lithuania has minor output in the Baltic (along with Poland). Estonia produces manufactured oil from mined shale beds.

Regional Group in Europe

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA

A colourful house

Eastern Europe overlies the southern part of the eastwards drifting Eurasian Plate. The Asian part of Russia overlies the rest of the northern part of this plate. Its southern margin was geologically defined by the break-up of the super-continent of Pangea in the Jurassic into Gondwana and Laurasia. The intervening Palaeo and Neo-Tethys Seas then closed and the boundary now forms the Carpathians, the Black Sea, and the Greater Caucasus which appeared during the collision with Eurasia of the Apulian, Arabian and Iranian Plates and then the African Plate.

The Alpine Carpathians Mountains are an arc-shaped range running from the Czech Republic, through southern Poland and Ukraine, and southwards into western Romania. The Pannonian foreland basin lies to the south and west whilst to the north is a stable basinal plain overlying the East European Craton (Russian platform). This contains rift and sag basins including the Polish, Pripyat, Dnieper-Donetz, Volga-Urals and Timan-Pechora basins which variously underlie several countries of northeastern Europe.

East of the Carpathians, the Black Sea comprised back-arc basins in the Palaeo-Tethys Ocean in which compression led to uplift of Crimea in the Cimmerian orogeny. The westward escape of the Anatolian block of Turkey along the North and East Anatolian Faults produced the current deep sea basin with its associated volcanic activity. The Greater and Lesser Caucasus Mountains further east were uplifted in the Miocene as a result of collision between the Arabian and Iranian plates with the Eurasian plate. The mountains are submerged in the Caspian Sea (a remnant of the Neo-Tethys).

The preserved north-south trending Urals Mountains divide Europe from Asia. They were formed during the Uralian orogeny in the early Mesozoic when the super-continent of Laurussia collided with the Siberian and Kazakhstan Blocks to create Laurasia. The Kazakhstan Block underlies Kazakhstan, West Siberia and parts of China and Mongolia roughly approximating to the current border with Russia.

Eastern Russia has a complex geological history with the linked basins of West and East Siberia overlying the Siberian craton. In the Far East subduction along the Pacific plate margin created a complex system of island arcs, orogens and rifted basins including that of the Sakhalin area.

Finally, the north of the region is bounded on the west by the Fennoscandian Shield and on the east by the North American Plate. A series of passive margin and rift basins extend into Arctic Seas either side of the Zemlya and other accreted micro-continents.