492 
OTHER AREAS OF OFFSHORE OIL AND GAS ACTIVITY 
Soviet oilmen place great hope in the Baltic Sea. Several promising 
fields, the Krasnoborsk, Ladushkin, and others, have been discovered 
on the eastern coast of the Baltic. In Kaliningrad Province, the 
Ushakova field was extended under the Bay of Kaliningrad of the 
Baltic Sea, by a deviated onshore well which yielded 700 barrels 
per day of oil.* 
The Soviets have done considerable geophysical work in the Baltic 
Sea, but have apparently not as yet constructed a fixed drilling plat- 
form on the Baltic shelf. They have no mobile rigs available in the 
area. For the past 5 years the Russians have been negotiating with 
Sweden regarding the offshore boundary between the two countries 
in the Baltic Sea. The talks were suspended in April 1974 without 
agreement. The point of contention revolves around the island of 
Gotland, where Sweden has discovered oil and where some geologic 
structures extend eastward under the seabed. Sweden wants the boun- 
dary to lie halfway between Gotland and the Soviet mainland, while 
the Soviets maintain that it should lie halfway between the two main- 
lands.*® 
To the north, the Soviets have made an oil and gas strike on 
the Arctic coast at Varandei near the southeastern end of the Pechora 
Sea, an eastern arm of the Barents Sea. Undisclosed quantities of 
oil and gas were recovered from the 1,615 to the 1,715 meter interval 
which helps advance the claim of Soviet geologists that commercial 
hydrocarbons will be found along an extensive area of the Barents 
Sea shelf.47 The Varandei area is at the northern end of the remote 
Bolshezemelskya Tundra, lying between the Pechora River on the 
west and the Ural Mountains on the east. Varandei, like the Vasilkov- 
skoye gas condensate field located to the southwest near the mouth 
of the Pechora River, is believed to be on a geologic structure that 
extends offshore. Both Varandei and Vasilkovskoye are located in 
the Timan-Pechora basin which is believed to contain vast oil and 
gas deposits, particularly in the northern areas that cut across an 
extensive shelf zone of the Barents Sea. Russia has completed 
thousands of kilometers of seismic surveys in the Barents Sea and 
has made estimates of oil and gas reserves for a large portion of 
the region.*® 
In the western part of the Barents Sea, the Soviet Union and Norway 
have been unable to agree on a division of the continental shelf. 
Norway’s position is based on the “middle line  principle’”’ as 
established in the 1958 Geneva Convention, while the Soviets appear 
to favor the ‘‘sector principle’’ which, in spite of a deviation around 
Spitsbergen, would bring Soviet sovereignty over an additional 150,000 
square kilometers of continental shelf.*® 
45 King, Robert E. Petroleum Exploration and Production in Europe in 1974. American Association 
of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, Vol. 59, No. 10, October 1975, p. 1831. 
46 Gotland Strikes Spark Soviet Interest. The Oil and Gas Journal, January 27, 1975, p. 75. 
47 Ocean Oil Weekly Report, Vol. 9, No. 42, July 14, 1975, pp. 1-2. 
48 Ibid. 
“© Kamer, Hansrudolf. Norway and the U.S.S.R. Square Off in the Arctic. Swiss Review of World 
Affairs, v. 24, no. 6, September 1974, p. 4. 
