The general problems of geological exploration are considered, in particular, quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the fields discovered in 1996-2000 are given. It is shown that, although the dynamics of growth of oil reserves in recent years somewhat stabilized, the situation in this area is far from ideal. The share of new discoveries in the total increment is insignificant (a little more than 20 %), and their most part falls on the region which is already well studied geologically - Western Siberia. Qualitative characteristics of increasing reserves in all oil-bearing provinces continues to deteriorate. On the basis of the analysis of the dynamics of prospecting works carried out in Russia in 1996-2000 the main directions of improvement and development of prospecting works are proposed.
