Samotlor oil field

Samotlor is the largest oil field in Russia and one of the largest in the world. It lies around Lake Samotlor in Western Siberia, in the Khanty-Mansi region, and covers about 1,752 square kilometres of swamps and sand.

The field was discovered in 1965, and the first oil was produced in 1969. At its peak in 1980 it gave about 159 million tonnes of oil in a single year, which was a huge share of the Soviet Union's oil. Today it is much older and has been mostly pumped out, but new methods keep it producing. It lies in a region of lakes and swamps in Siberia.

From swamp to oil capital

Before the oil boom, the nearby town of Nizhnevartovsk was a small village. Samotlor turned it into a busy oil city, since the field became the most important oil base of the Soviet Union. Over its history, builders drilled more than 17,000 wells in about 2,086 well clusters, and the field produced about 2.6 billion tonnes of oil. Because the ground is swampy, the wells stand in groups on raised sand pads.

Past its peak

Output peaked in 1980 and fell for years. By the end of the 1990s it had dropped to about 300,000 barrels a day, and later programs lifted it again to around 750,000. Today the field is about 80 percent used up, with a high share of water mixed into the oil. Companies are now trying advanced technologies to reach the remaining oil, which is harder to extract.

On the globe

The model shows oil wells in clusters on sand pads in a Siberian swamp and lake. Look for the pads dotted around the water.