OREANDA-NEWS. On August 15, 2008 a scientific and technical conference "Engineering and technology of the oil fields development" devoted to the 60th anniversary from the start of the Romashkinskoe oil field commercial development was held in Leninogorsk (Tatarstan), the press-centre of Tatneft reported.

Nail Ibragimov, First Deputy General Director for Production - Chief Engineer of OAO Tatneft. welcomed the conference participants and his welcoming address was followed by the main speakers: Renat Muslimov, Consultant to the President of Tatarstan on the development of oil and gas fields (Super-giant Romashkinskoe oil field: past, present and future), Ravil Ibatullin, Director of TatNIPIneft Research and  Design Institute  (Further disclosure of the Romashkinskoe Field potential), Rais Khisamov, Chief Geologist of OAO Tatneft (Problems and solutions to optimize development of the intensely depleted oil fields), Alexander Panarin, Deputy Chief of the Department of oil and gas fields development of OAO Gazpromneft (Technology of optimizing oil reservoir production is the basis of energy saving) and several
other speakers.

The conference was held in three sections: "Geology and Development of Oil Fields", "Well Construction and Completion" and "Well Operation and Workover".

The conference was attended by the experts and scientists of OAO Tatneft, TatNIPIneft (Research and  Design Institute), Almetyevsk State Petroleum Institute as well as by the guest: representatives of leading oil, service companies and research centers of Russia: Gazpromneft, LUKOIL, Schlumberger, Kazan State University, Federal Agency "State Reserves Commission for mineral reserves", VNIGRI, etc.

The history of commercial development of the Romashkinskoe oil field goes back to 1948, when the drilling crew headed by the tool pusher Sergey Kuzmin hit a powerful Devonian stratum near the village of Timyashevo. When tested on July 25 the well flowed with the rate of more than 120 tons per day.

The Romashkinskoe oil field is among the ten super-giant fields in the world. Its discovery and development has for many years defined the development trend of the whole country's oil industry. For several decades the field used to be a real range for testing numerous new technologies and advanced hardware in the field of subsurface exploration, well penetration and oil production, which were widely applied not only in the production shops of Tatneft, but also at the countrywide scale as well as broad.

For example, a method of the center-to-edge waterflooding initially applied at the Romashkinskoe field has become a classic example of a rational development of large crude oil deposits and it is widely applied today throughout the world. A large group of Tatneft's professionals as well as scientists of VNIIneft were awarded the Lenin Prize in 1962 for the introduction of the  method and for the thesis "The new system of the oilfields development with application of  the center-to-edge waterflooding and its implementation at the largest in the USSR Romashkinskoe oilfields".

The Romashkino field today still remains the main field in Tatarstan. The production of this field today amounts to more than 15 million tons of crude oil, or half the volume produced in the Republic. More than 2.2 billion tons of crude oil have been produced already from its entrails, while the remaining potential of the field is still high.