OREANDA-NEWS. November 23, 2009. V. V. Putin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, made a working trip to the Volga Federal District and held a visiting meeting in Nizhnekamsk (Tatarstan) on the following subject "Measures on gas and petroleum chemistry development", reported the press-centre of TATNEFT.

During the trip, V.V. Putin visited a number of industrial enterprises of the machine building complex and the petrochemical and crude oil refining complex. Among other things the Prime Minister got acquainted with the progress of implementation of the major strategic project of OAO TATNEFT: the Oil Refining and Petrochemical Complex OAO TANECO. The complex consists of three plants: a crude oil refinery, a petrochemical plant and a deeper crude oil processing plant. The capacity of the complex will allow refining up to 7 million tons of sour crude oil per year with the depth of processing amounting to 96.9 percent.

The project implementation will allow for substitution of the crude oil exports by high quality motor fuels exports and substitution of the petrochemical products imports. Approximate investments into the TANECO plants complex are estimated in the amount of more than 200 billion rubles. Despite the complicated financial and economic situation in the country, construction of the TANECO plants is progressing in accordance with the schedule planned. About 7 thousand persons are engaged at the construction site with application of 1 thousand pieces of construction equipment. About 3 billion rubles per month are spent for construction and installation works.

A number of governors of the Volga Federal District and the leaders of the oil and petrochemical industry companies accompanied by R.N. Minnikhanov, Prime Minister of the Republic of Tatarstan, and F.L. Shchelkov, Deputy General Director of TATNEFT, visited another facility of TATNEFT's petrochemical branch: Nizhnekamsk plant for production of truck and bus solid steel cord (SSC) design tires.

The construction of the plant was started in 2007. Today it is already operating in the start-and-adjustment mode, and the first products go through testing in Tatarstan and in Germany. The production capacity of the plant is planned up to 1.2 million tires per year. The total project cost has made more than US500 million. SSC tires in Nizhnekamsk will be manufactured under the most advanced technologies and they will fully conform to the highest international standards.

V.V. Putin noted that "Russia sells crude oil and gas and then it has to buy expensive oil products from other countries, therefore it is just required to develop high level processing of our own resources. The situation in the industry needs to be changed in order to create the environment for export of products with high added value".

The participants of the working trip highly appreciated the efforts of Tatarstan and TATNEFT Company in development of domestic tire production and the scale of constructing the TANECO plants complex. They noted that the implementation of such investment projects in the world financial crisis environment is a worthy indicator of the Company's activity, and demonstrates a high potential of its development.