  The paper describes combinatorial framework for planning of geological
exploration for oil-gas fields. The suggested scheme of the geological
exploration involves the following stages: (1) building of special 4-layer
tree-like model (layer of geological exploration): productive layer, group of
productive layers, oil-gas field, oil-gas region (or group of the fields); (2)
generations of local design (exploration) alternatives for each low-layer
geological objects: conservation, additional search, independent utilization,
joint utilization; (3) multicriteria (i.e., multi-attribute) assessment of the
design (exploration) alternatives and their interrelation (compatibility) and
mapping if the obtained vector estimates into integrated ordinal scale; (4)
hierarchical design ('bottom-up') of composite exploration plans for each
oil-gas field; (5) integration of the plans into region plans and (6)
aggregation of the region plans into a general exploration plan. Stages 2, 3,
4, and 5 are based on hierarchical multicriteria morphological design (HMMD)
method (assessment of ranking of alternatives, selection and composition of
alternatives into composite alternatives). The composition problem is based on
morphological clique model. Aggregation of the obtained modular alternatives
(stage 6) is based on detection of a alternatives 'kernel' and its extension by
addition of elements (multiple choice model). In addition, the usage of
multiset estimates for alternatives is described as well. The alternative
estimates are based on expert judgment. The suggested combinatorial planning
methodology is illustrated by numerical examples for geological exploration of
Yamal peninsula.
