**1. Introduction**

The exhaustion of readily available hydrocarbons leads to the need to change the principles, strategy and tactics of the development and operation of deposits with hard-to-recover

**Citation:** Samylovskaya, E.; Makhovikov, A.; Lutonin, A.; Medvedev, D.; Kudryavtseva, R.-E. Digital Technologies in Arctic Oil and Gas Resources Extraction: Global Trends and Russian Experience. *Resources* **2022**, *11*, 29. https:// doi.org/10.3390/resources11030029

Academic Editor: Antonio A. R. Ioris

Received: 1 February 2022 Accepted: 9 March 2022 Published: 11 March 2022

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reserves. First, the issue is the optimization of the processes taking place at the enterprise and the introduction of new effective technologies that reduce the cost of production.

Under these conditions, there is a natural increase in the pace at which oil and gas companies introduce intelligent technologies for hydrocarbons production management. These companies ensure the optimal redistribution of resources and effective planning of production in the short and long term. Taking into account the peculiarities of Arctic hydrocarbon deposits (remoteness from existing infrastructure and consumption centers, harsh climatic conditions, etc.), such technologies become essential, since they aim to reduce downtime and drilling costs, reducing production losses, as well as increasing the oil recovery coefficient [1]. Digitalization is designed to reduce the costs associated with hydrocarbons' exploration and production, as well as with the development and production of special equipment. The received geological, technical, statistical and other data are available in a single cloud, where they are stored, processed and analyzed. This allows track production indicators to be tracked in real time and, among other things, prevents breakdowns and accidents in real time.

The Arctic is a region, which has a strong potential for the global oil and gas industry development. At the same time, there is a number of factors limiting the extractive industry development and other economic activities in the region, especially in the Russian sector: remoteness of territories, difficult climatic conditions, a fragile ecosystem, lack of trained specialists, poorly developed infrastructure, etc. These limitations make the introduction and widespread development of digital technologies a particularly promising concept. In this regard, the purpose of this study is to analyze the current and forecast the prospective state of introducing digital technologies into the oil and gas mining industry in the Russian Arctic. For this, it seems necessary to analyze the global trends of digital technologies' introduction into the oil and gas mining industry, consider the experience of Russian companies in this area, identify the main trends and prospects of oil and gas resources' development in the Russian Arctic from a digitalization point of view, and consider the prospect of digital technologies' introduction into the oil and gas industry under RES competition.

The structure of this paper is as follows: a description of research methods and approaches (including an expert survey of characteristics); analysis of the expert survey results; review of global trends in oil and gas resources production digitalization; analysis of the Russian oil and gas production digitalization experience; analysis of the specifics of hydrocarbon production in the Arctic (including "sensitivity parameters" that affect the process of digitalization in Russian Arctic oil and gas projects); analysis of prospects for the introduction of digital technologies in the Arctic oil and gas industry in competition with RES; research results; and an appendix (description of the expert survey).
