ST. PETERSBURG, June 7. /TASS/. Oil exploration in Russia remains profitable at an oil price not lower than $65-70 a barrel, CEO of the Russian state geological company Rosgeo Sergey Gorkov told TASS in an interview on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

"The practice shows this is about $70 [per barrel]. The price of $65-70 [per barrel] is a cutoff level with regrettably little attention paid to geology below that," the top manager said.

Insufficient investments in exploration can affect oil reserves in future, Gorkov said. "Certainly, no attention can be paid to exploration for a couple of years but considering that the cycle amounts to 7-10 years in our business, prospects can be merely lost," the chief executive said.

Oil exploration is gradually recovering now after the crisis year of 2020, Gorkov noted. "If we speak about solid minerals, on the contrary, there was a geological boom because high last-year prices of gold, platinum and non-ferrous metals definitely promoted further investment growth. Certainly, this market is smaller than the hydrocarbon one but it is fairly significant, he added.