OREANDA-NEWS. March 03, 2010. Russian oilmen understand the necessity of training new specialists and developing the scientific capability. Vladimir Putin got assured of that late last week when he visited Tyumen Petroleum Research Center (TPRC) owned by TNK-BP. In his turn, he advised oilmen to provide more workload for the Russian industry, reported the press-centre of TNK-BP.

Oil companies started publishing reserves audit reports in February. The trends in this area evoke little optimism. The pace of replacement of the country’s mineral reserves is critically low. According to Vladimir Litvinenko, Head of the Russian State Council Working Group for Improving the State Policy on Subsoil Use and Rector of the Saint-Petersburg State Mining Institute, exploration is currently surviving a deep system crisis characterized by obsolete equipment, specialists in pension age, and stagnating science schools. “As a result, we already engaged everything that was explored in production. Only an insignificant fraction of earlier explored fields still remain unengaged”, he said. – “Saving on exploration means depriving oneself of future advantages of a resource power”.

When the Russian Prime Minister visited TPRC, German Khan, TNK-BP Executive Director, said the company always paid special attention to educational programs and the need to invest in education and science.

“The meeting was dedicated to our company’s young specialist training programs that are implemented on the basis of TPRC, a research center that uses oil and gas industry experience”, Khan said to the media upon completion of the Prime Minister’s visit to the company research center. – “The Prime Minister was shown some technologies and we demonstrated how young specialists exercise in driller and geologist training programs”. TNK-BP Executive Director also added that his company spends ca. 200 million rubles per year for advanced training of graduates in specialized disciplines.

Tyumen scientists participate in developing of almost all TNK-BP oil and gas production projects. Their contribution helped the company to create an entire oil province out of a hopeless Uvat Project. The first two of the fifteen fields covered by the Project were commissioned a year ago and have already produced more than 2 Mt of oil by now. TNK-BP intends to ensure addition of recoverable oil reserves in Uvat by 17.4 Mt in three years.

There are other examples of successful TPRC work. For instance, Kamennoe Field in Khanty-Mansiyskiy Autonomous Area was always considered quite challenging, too. The ideas suggested by the scientists helped the oilmen to find a method for most efficient drilling of wells that does not endanger the environment.

The key objective for TPRC researchers nowadays is to find ways to develop fields in East Siberia and Yamalo-Nenetskiy Autonomous Area. The key complexity is that these fields are rich in resources, on the one hand, but, on the other, their harsh climatic conditions and oil characteristics do not allow for efficient production. It is necessary to locate and drill wells in an optimal way to solve the problems and to propose methods of transportation of oil in case it is highly viscous as, for instance, in Russkoe Field.

The problem of new discoveries is also acute in Russia. TPRC staff, for instance, discovered three new fields in 2009. This is not much but the fact that TNK-BP is implementing three programs simultaneously aimed at training young specialists including in exploration (with training provided by the best British universities). This holds out a hope that new discoveries will become much more numerous in the nearest future and, therefore, many thousands of company employees will be confident of their tomorrow.