MOSCOW, March 6. /TASS/. Russia has a great potential of mineral reserves on the continental shelf, as well as in the Arctic Zone, head of the national agency for subsoil reserves, Rosnedra, Evgeny Petrov, told the Far East and Arctic: Sustainable Development conference.

The Russian continental shelf has many geological "blind spots," he said. The country continues to work very modestly, despite the existing potential, he added. "This resource base will be sufficient not even for the next 20-50 years, but for much longer. I mean not just oil and gas. In the deep-sea part, we can see ferromanganese nodules in the Arctic Ocean, which have not been estimated," he said. "Those are our Far Eastern seas. This is the potential we have not yet realized, with which we are not working yet."

The potential of the Russian Arctic Zone and in the shelf's depths has been studied by only 10-20%, he added.