In Poland, oil fields occur in the Polish Lowland (Niz Polski), the Baltic Sea (Morze Baltyckie), the Carpathian Foredeep (Zapadlisko Przedkarpackie), and on the Carpathians (Karpaty) (see map). The Polish Lowland has become the most important petroliferous area in this country since BMB oil field was explored in 1996, the resources of which are more than two times as much as the all Poland resources at the time. In this area the next oil and gas fields (Lubiatow, Kosarzyn) were explored in last years. The Polish Lowland accounts for 76.4 % of the national resources, the Baltic Sea 18.6 %, while the Carpathian Foredeep - 1.6 % and the Carpathians 1.5 % only. The initial proven oil resources of oil and oil condensate, as well as the state of their identification and management are shown in Table 14.1. In the Polish Lowland, oil fields occur in the Permian, Carboniferous and Cambrian rocks. They yield medium paraffin (4.3 - 7.4 %) oil with sulfur content exceeding 1 % and density ranging from 0.857 g/cm3 to 0.870 g/cm3. In the regions being considered, beside oil fields, there are also oil condensate fields, containing 100 g of condensate per 1 cm3 of gas. On the Baltic area (off shore) crude oil occurs within the Middle Cambrian measures. Hydrocarbon content amounts to 73 % and density to 0.811 g/dm3. The only exploited deposit is B3, the B8 is explored in details. In the Carpathian Foredeep, oil fields occur in the Tertiary sediments and the Mesozoic sediments of a platform type (mainly Jurassic carbonate rocks, rarely in Cretaceous sandstones) that mostly underlie the impermeable Miocene clay sediments. They are mainly bedded fields, stratigraphically closed (either lithological or tectonic). In this region, it is light and medium weight oil (it is density being 0.811-0.846 g/cm3). The oil contains 2.32 - 9.37 % paraffin and the content of sulfur ranges, on the average, from 0.45 to 0.85 %. In the Carpathians oil fields, there occur in several tectonic units, including: the Magura, Dukla-Michow, sub-Silesian, Silesian and Skole one, but most of them lie in the Silesian unit. They are mainly structural fields, seldom structural-lithological ones, mostly of a bedded type. The Carpathian oil is of methane type. Its density ranges from 0.750 to 0.943 g/cm3. It is free from sulfur, mostly a paraffin oil containing 3.5 - 7 % of paraffin. The reserves are small and they depend on the quantity and type of the structures in which they occur. Initially, in place resources mainly range from a few to over 400 thousand tons. Many years of the exploitation, has exhausted the reserves in this region. Among 89 oil fields 69 are under exploitation and their resources amount to 93.5 % of the total Polish reserves. The intrinsically economic oil resources of Poland amounted to about 19,519 thousands tons in 2004, with the total economic reserves amounting to 16,218 thousand tons. The production (Fig. 14.1) of oil and condensate amounted to 866 thousand tons in 2004. The production of oil from the Carpathian oil fields amounted to 3.44 % of the total Polish oil production, from the Carpathian Foredeep to 2.50 %, from the Polish Lowland to 64.75 % and from the Polish economic zone of the Baltic Sea to 29.33 %.
Table 14.1 Crude oil (thousand tons)
* total, ** crude oil, *** oil condensate Table 14.2 Directions of Polish import of crude oil
Imports of oil amounted to 17,316 thousand tons in 2004. Directions and quantities of imports are shown in Table 14.2. Over 96 % of oil imported to Poland came from Russia, 1.89 % from Ukraine and 1.07 % from Kazakhstan. Imports of oil products (fuels, paraffin, oils, mineral jelly, waxes, etc.) amounted to 5,641 thousand tons while exports to 2,331 thousand tons (Table 14.3). The estimate of perspective resources shows that the possibility of an increase of the oil reserves is limited. Such an increase is possible mainly in the Polish Lowland, on the Baltic Sea (in the Polish economic zone) and in the Carpathians where exploration is actually under way. According to the estimate of the Polish Geological Institute made in 1991, the prognostic oil resources in Poland (except for the Baltic Sea) totalled 72.5 million tons, including 46 million tons in the Polish Lowland, 17.5 million tons in the Carpathians and 9 million tons in the Carpathian Foredeep.
Table 14.3 Directions
of Polish imports and exports of oil products
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