Earlier this year, Russia's Gazprom Neft built the country's first robotic underground research center Geosfera in Tyumen. The center is equipped with 16 laboratories and a team of more than 100 experts including mathematicians, geomechanicians, geophysicists, etc., focusing on simulating the full process of oil extraction, with particular research on hard-to-recover oilfields and permafrost zone samples.

As global shallow oilfield resources become depleted, the petroleum industry is shifting toward the development of complex deposits. Oil in such deposits is trapped in tiny pores within hard, heterogeneous rock, and traditional vertical drilling technology can no longer meet the demand. According to statistics, in the past, domestic geologists often discovered deposits with reserves exceeding 100 million tons, while in recent years, confirming reserves of 10 million tons is already considered a success.

To meet the challenge, the Geosfera center has introduced full-process automation and digitalization technology. Core samples arriving at the center are immediately barcoded by robots and entered into the database, then sent to robotic storage facilities after preliminary processing. Intelligent assistants distribute the cores to laboratories via automated transport systems, saving laboratory technicians 30% of their working time.

The core innovation of the center lies in creating a "digital twin" for each core sample—through more than 20 tests including CT scanning, atomic force microscopy, X-ray structural analysis, etc., the physical properties and chemical composition of the samples are fully recorded. All data is aggregated into a virtual "digital passport" that researchers can access and analyze unlimited times, avoiding wear and tear on the actual samples.

This technology system significantly improves research efficiency. The movement of rock samples and research data achieve fully digital management, increasing the speed of oilfield decision-making several times over. Geosfera's automated operations and digital simulation technology not only reduce the workload of experts but also provide solutions for extracting high-difficulty hydrocarbon reserves in areas outside the Arctic Circle and regions with weak infrastructure through precise analysis of complex geological structures.

Industry experts point out that the completion of the Geosfera center marks the entry of Russian energy technology into a new stage of intelligence. The digital twin technology developed there may reshape global oil exploration models, making previously uneconomical giant reserves technically and economically viable due to past technological limitations.