Technical and economic performance of multilateral drilling on Russia’s Arctic shelf with evidence from Siberian fields

The liquids output of Russia is mainly in the Siberian basins with extra resources on the Arctic shelf. The conditions in these areas are difficult from both a technical and logistical perspective, which affects both well design and field planning. The study determines the case where multilateral wells offer better technical and economic performance in this situation. A PRISMA 2020 guided systematic review included English and Russian sources published between 2017 and 2025. Databases included Scopus, Web of Science, One Petro, Science Direct, eLIBRARY ru, and CyberLeninka. Economic results were standardised by price year and discount rate. Results indicate that multilateral wells are technically feasible at high latitude. Best outcomes occur when placement is accurate, junction integrity is reliable, branch level surveillance is active, and learning reduces drilling time. Economic performance improves when production targets are met with fewer surface sites and when monitoring delays costly water handling. Value is most sensitive to oil prices, water breakthrough timing and junction reliability. Post COVID shifts in markets and logistics increased the benefit of concentrating output per site and staging decisions. Recommendations follow directly from these results. Deploy multilaterals only where junction integrity and branch diagnostics can be assured. Start with a focused pilot, quantify learning, and scale after cycle time and variance decline. Standardise economic appraisal and stress test price paths, water timing, and integrity. Mitigate Arctic logistics risk through prepositioned inventories and schedules aligned to ice and weather windows.

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