Raymond’s Geology Blog
June 29, 2026

Russia Pt. 3 – the Mineral Industry

Figure 1 - Axinite, Quartz, Apatite, and Albite from Puiva Mine, Russia
Credit: Raimond Spekking, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

One of the great geopolitical facts about Russia, throughout the history of the country since the times of the Kievan Rus, has been the vast potential of its natural resources. This is a result of the shear size of the Russian Federation, approximately 17,098,242 km2, together with its varied geology (see Part 1). According to the most recent edition of the USGS Minerals Yearbook on Russia (2022): “The Russian Federation was one of the world’s leading producers of mineral commodities and produced a diverse range of metals, industrial minerals, and mineral fuels”. Russia leads world production in mineral commodities such as:

Industrial minerals: asbestos (56% of world output), sulfur (9.2%), vermiculite (5.6%), kaolin (4.8%), magnesium compounds (4.4% of production outside USA), zeolites (3.9%), helium (3.2%), barite (3.0%), salt (3.0%), lime (2.7%), diatomite (2.0%), industrial sand and gravel (2.0%), cement (1.5%).

Fertilizer minerals: potash (17% of the world’s production), nitrogen (9.7%), phosphate rock (6.1%), peat (5.9%).

Electronics metals: Tellurium (12% of the world’s production), silicon (11%), selenium (10% of production outside USA), cobalt (4.7%), cadmium (4.4%, not including United States production), tantalum (1.6%), rare earths (0.9%), arsenic (0.8%), niobium (0.5%), indium (0.5%), graphite (1.0%)

Alloy metals: vanadium (20% of the world’s production), titanium sponge (7.4%), antimony (5.2%), tungsten (2.5%), molybdenum (0.7%)

Aluminum minerals: aluminum (5.4% of the world’s production), alumina (2.2%) bauxite (1.4%).

Iron and steel: pig iron (4.0% of the world’s production), raw steel (3.8%), iron ore (3.6%)

Base metals: nickel (6.8% of the world’s production),lead (4.7%), mined copper (4.3%), refined copper (3.9%), zinc (2.4%), magnesium metal (2.0%, not including United States production),

Precious metals:

  • Gold (10% of the world’s production) and silver (5.0%),

  • PGM elements 43% of the world’s palladium and 11% of the word’s platinum.

  • Diamonds, industrial diamonds (40%), gem-quality diamond ( 31%).

Fuel Minerals: natural gas (15.3% of the world’s production), crude petroleum, including condensate (13.1%), refined petroleum (6.8%), coal (5.3%), uranium (5.1%).

Russia is also was a significant global producer of boron, feldspar, germanium, iodine, and tin.

Other interesting statistics on the Russian mineral industry include:

  • In 2022, the mineral industry accounted for 12.7% of Russian GDP.

  • Also in 2022, a total of $5.23 billion was spent on geologic exploration in Russia,

The most recent (2022) of Russian mineral production statistics from the USGS can be found on Table 1 here. Table 2, on the same spreadsheet, shows the location of mines, quarries, oil/gas fields, and other mineral production facilities. Rather than list all these facilities, let’s look at a couple of significant deposits in Russia.

Metal Deposits - Norilsk

Figure 2 - Nornickel's Bystrinsky Mine and Concentrator
Credit: Andrey Kuzmin, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

Nornickel is the current operator of the Norilsk mining operation near the city of Norilsk in Krasnoyarsk Krai, Siberia. Geologists Innokenty Lopatin and Friedrich Schmidt Friedrich Schmidt first discovered the Norilsk deposits in 1866, other geologists, including Nikolay Urvantsev, continued the exploration after 1919. After the initial geological exploration, the story takes a dark turn, thanks to the demands of Joseph Stalin’s Five Year Plans.

The Soviet government originally built the Norilsk mining camp during the 1930’s and its development was put under the control of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). Construction of the mine and townsite began in 1935, with the labour coming from prisoners in the Norilsk Gulag labour camp. The era of prison labour at Norilsk officially ended in 1993 when the current operators took over and they generally began to use paid workers at the mine. However, as of 2025, people are still being sentenced to work at Norilsk for various offences.

The Norilsk Mining Complex

Figure 3 – False-color image of Norilsk, Siberia
Credit: Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory, public domain

The Norilsk mining complex produces a variety of metals, primarily nickel (96% of all Russian production), palladium, and platinum. Other metals produced include rhodium, cobalt, copper, silver, gold, iridium, ruthenium, selenium, and tellurium. Sulphur is also produced as a byproduct of the smelting operation. The operation of the smelter has resulted in environmental degradation to the local environment; Norilsk is considered the most polluted city in the Arctic.

The Norilsk mining complex is divided into two main clusters: the Norilsk Cluster and the Talnakh Ore Cluster. The Norilsk Cluster is located and includes: the Norilsk 1 Field, right under the city; the Norilsk 2 Field,near Mount Gudchikha, to the east of Norilsk 1; the Maslov Field, south of Norilsk 1; and the Chernogorskoye Field, east of the Maslov Field.

35 km north of Norilsk is the Talnakh Ore Cluster, which is located in the Talnakh District on the Taymyr Peninsula. The two main fields in the Talnakh cluster are the Talnakh Field and the Oktyabrskoye Field.

Geology of the Norilsk Deposit

Figure 4 - Geology of the Norilsk Region
Credit: Figure 1 in Canhimbue & Talovina, 2023

The geology of the Norilsk complex is related to the formation of the Siberian Traps Large Igneous Province at the end of the Permian and the beginning of the Triassic. The result was a complex series of layered intrusions, dykes, and sills, made up of troctolites and gabbros. The mineralization within the host rocks consists of disseminated sulphides and massive sulphides.

Figure 5 – Generalized Cross-Section Norilsk Region
Credit: Figure 3 in Latypov, 2003

This is, of course, a mere brief summary of a very complex geological structure. For further reading, you can start with these papers and summary descriptions:

West Siberian Basin

Figure 6 – West Siberian Basin
Credit: Figure 1 in USGS Bulletin 2201-G, public domain

The West Siberian Basin is probably the largest and most prolific hydrocarbon system in the world with proven reserves exceeding 23 billion cubic metres of oil and over 45 billion cubic metres of natural gas. It has a complex geology, which I will summarize here. My summary below is based upon the two references listed below, which are worth reading all on there own.

  • Ulmishek, G. F., 2003, Petroleum geology and resources of the West Siberian Basin, Russia (Version 1.0): U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 2201, 49 p., https://doi.org/10.3133/b2201G.

  • Khafizov, S. F., Syngaevsky, P. & Dolson, J., 2022. The West Siberian Super Basin: The largest and most prolific hydrocarbon basin in the world. AAPG Bulletin. 106. 517-572. 10.1306/11192121086, https://doi.org/10.1306/11192121086, ResearchGate link here.

I will also provide links to other papers as we go along.

Overview

Tectonically, the West Siberian Basin is one of the one of the largest intracratonic basins in the world. It covers an area of around 3.5 million km2 and is bounded by:

The basin itself is a Mesozoic–Cenozoic sag on top of an earlier, Early Triassic, rift system. There are three main petroleum producing systems in the West Siberian Basin, as discussed in USGS Bulletin 2201:

  1. The Bazhenov-Neocomian Total Petroleum System;

  2. The Togur-Tyumen Total Petroleum System; and

  3. The Northern West Siberian Mesozoic Composite Total Petroleum System.

Let’s look at these systems.

Bazhenov-Neocomian Total Petroleum System

Figure 7 – Summary Chart of the Bazhenov-Neocomian Total Petroleum System
Credit: Figure 18 in USGS Bulletin 2201-G, public domain

The important features of the Bazhenov-Neocomian Total Petroleum System (BN-TPS) include:

Togur-Tyumen Total Petroleum System

Figure 8 - Summary Chart of the Togur-Tyumen Total Petroleum System
Credit: Figure 24 in USGS Bulletin 2201-G, public domain

Physically, the Togur-Tyumen Total Petroleum System (TT-TPS) underlies the BN-TPS, the important features of the TT-TPS include:

  • Several dozen hydrocarbon fields, mostly petroleum, have been found in the TT-TPS.

  • The deposits of the TT-TPS range in age from Late Triassic to Middle Jurassic.

  • The source rocks for the hydrocarbons in the TT-TPS are Early and Middle Jurassic in age, the organic-rich shales of the lower Toarcian Togur Bed in the Tyumen Formation.

  • The reservoir rocks of the TT-TPS are Early and Late Jurassic aged continental sandstones of the Tyumen Formation.

  • The cap rocks are Late Jurassic in age and are a combination of structural and stratigraphic traps.

Northern West Siberian Mesozoic Composite Total Petroleum System

As shown in Figure 6, the Northern West Siberian Mesozoic Composite Total Petroleum System (NWSM-CTPS) is located at the northern end of the basin and extends under the Kara Sea. Important features of the NWSM-CTPS include:

  • About 70 hydrocarbon fields, the majority of them gas, have been discovered in the NWSM-CTPS.

  • The deposits of the NWSM-CTPS range in age from Lower Jurassic to Cenozoic.

  • The source rocks for the hydrocarbons in the NWSM-CTPS are not well defined but probably include the Triassic aged Tampey Formation, and the Upper Jurassic aged Vasyugan Formation; some of the gas in the Cretaceous aged formations may have been formed by catagenetic processes; research continues on this subject.

  • Reservoir rocks in the include the sedimentary section between the Lower to Middle Jurassic aged Tyumen Formation through the upper Aptian–Cenomanian aged Pokur Formation.

  • The cap rocks in the NWSM-CTPS are a combination of structural and stratigraphic traps.

Figure 9, is another graphic summary of the West Siberian Basin

Figure 9 - West Siberian Basin
Credit: Figure 2 in Khafizov, Syngaevsky, & Dolson, 2022

Summary

Figure 10 – Charoitite from a Mine in Yakutia, Siberia
Credit: James St. John, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

That wraps up this brief, and entirely cursory, look at the mineral industry of Russia. In looking at the Russian mineral industry, it’s hard not to admire their accomplishments in developing mines and oil fields in the vast lands of Russia, especially in the harsh climate of Siberia. It is also hard to overlook the human cost of that development, the millions of people sent to work at mines in the Gulag Archipelago, often on the flimsiest of charges, and worked to death to meet the goals of the Soviet state. If you look at the interactive map of the locations of the camps in the former Soviet Prison System you will see that many of the camps were established to provide labour for mining operations.

Both Stalin and the Soviet Union are long dead and not mourned by many. The modern Russian state is still working to develop their still largely untouched mineral cornucopia. They are, of course, hugely distracted by their current difficulties in the Ukraine War. It will be interesting to see what happens in that conflict and in what follows it.

For geoscientists, there are likely to be many opportunities in exploring and developing Russia’s mineral wealth. Most of that work will be done by Russian geoscientists and we can only wish them the best in their endevours. Also, when the Russians exploit their mineral wealth, we can hope that they use more humane methods than their Soviet predecessors.

Standard Caveat

J. Robert Oppenheimer on freedom and scientific inquiry

The purpose of my weblog postings is to spark people's curiosity in geology. Don't entirely believe me until you've done your own research and checked the evidence. If I have sparked your curiosity in the subject of this posting, follow up with some of the links provided here. If you want to, go out into the field and examine some rocks on your own with the help of a good field guide. Follow the evidence and make up your own mind.

In science, the only authority is the evidence.