Russia’s unconventional hydrocarbon reserves: Russia’s Federal Mineral Resource Agency is to start re-estimating reserves of unconventional hydrocarbons – including shale gas and high-viscous oil – in 2015, it was announced yesterday. While current estimates put the country’s reserves at 22bn tons of oil equivalent (toe), Natural Resources and Environment Minister Sergei Donskoi predicted that this could be revised up to as much as 40bn toe, but executives at the state-owned exploration company Rosgeologiya told Donskoi that tax breaks for oil and companies were insufficient to make the extraction of inaccessible hydrocarbon reserves economically viable. The Moscow Times