OREANDA-NEWS. July 09, 2010. Division managers of the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation visited OAO TATNEFT. As part of the working visit to the structural divisions of TATNEFT Company the delegation of the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation familiarized with the construction progress of the TANECO complex of refinery and petrochemical plants and the pilot development operations at the field of natural bitumen, reported the press-centre of TATNEFT.

The delegation included the following members: S.I. Yerke, Director of the Department of Oil and Gas Transport of the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, P.A. Degtyarev, Director of the Department of Oil and Gas of the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, A.B. Bondarenko, Director of Legal Department of the Ministry of Energy, D.G. Khramov, Director of the Department of State policy and regulation in the field of geology and mineral resources of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation and other heads of divisions of the Ministry of Energy and the Natural Resources Ministry.

Accompanied by N.U. Maganov, First Deputy General Director of TATNEFT Company - Head of Sales Department (URNiN), A.F. Yagafarov, Deputy General Director, Director of OAO TATNEFT Representative Office in Moscow and Kh.A. Bagmanov, General Director of TANECO, members of the delegation visited the construction site and inspected the key facilities of the first starting complex, familiarizing with systems of crude oil receiving, products shipping and power supply. At each site visitors were interested in details of the facility's purpose and the degree of the facilities' readiness. Implementation of the TANECO project today has entered the final stretch. The start the first phase of construction is scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2010.

Kh.A. Bagmanov provided additional information on the construction of the complex of the refinery and petrochemical plants in his report at the meeting held in the office of OAO TANECO. Representatives of the Ministries and TATNEFT Company have discussed a number of issues that are important for implementation of the project. Specifically, it refers to increasing the design capacity of TANECO to 14 million tons of oil refining per year, power supply to the Complex and servicing of its railway infrastructure.

During their the two days visit the delegation members met with management and chief specialists of OAO TATNEFT headed by N.G. Ibragimov, First Deputy General Director - Chief Engineer.

Also the meeting was attended by experts from TatNIPIneft R&D Institute. The participants were presented reports on energy saving technologies used in TATNEFT, they discussed relevant issues relating to tax incentives for the development of smaller fields, introduction of oil recovery enhancement technologies, and technologies of associated petroleum gas utilization.

Department managers of the Ministry of Energy and the Natural Resources Ministry visited Ashalchinskoye extra-viscous oil (field of natural bitumen) deposits. Development of the field with application of steam-assisted gravity drainage technology was initiated in 2006. The amount of more than 47 thousand tons of oil was produced from the beginning of this method application. Drilling is performed with application of a slant mast Canadian drilling rig DRECO-2000. There are 6 pairs of horizontal wells drilled now (in each pair there is one well for the injection of steam, while the other one is for production of heated raw materials). Two pairs operate with production rate of 30 tons per day. The steam injection/oil production ratio reached the optimum value: three to one. The works on heating of the reservoir prior to putting the wells into operation are on the way in the remaining well pairs.

The meeting noted the relevance of the issues raised with regard to governmental support for the development of small deposits and deposits of extra-viscous oil and introduction of technologies to enhance oil recovery. This is due to increasing depletion of large fields and the increase of hard-to-recover oil reserves share in the resource base of the country. As P.A. Degtyarev mentioned, today the Government of the Russian Federation is considering a number of documents, which contain measures of tax incentives for small oil companies and oil companies, which are just beginning their activities.

The delegation got acquainted with the work and results of application of imported multiphase pumps (MPP), chain drives, technology of co-mingled well completion and operation. They also visited field facilities of the Company.

Currently, there are 1,172 wells in TATNEFT equipped with chain drives of various modifications with the major proportion accounted by PTs60 with stroke length of 3 meters: they are installed in 910 wells. Chain drives PTs80 with stroke length of 6 meters are installed in 253 wells. The plans for 2010 provide for introduction of 217 chain drives, including 158 units of PTs60 and 59 units of PTS80 in the fields of the Company.

Chain drives manufactured at the Bugulma Mechanical Plant (BMZ, which is part of Tatneft Group of Companies) are also installed at the sites of small oil companies of Tatarstan. There are about 180 units of this kind operated by the small companies as of today.

TATNEFT has been actively developing technologies of co-mingled well completion and operation of two or more layers concurrently. These technologies help to perform more intensive simultaneous development of different layers with application of the common well spacing pattern for reservoirs with radically different reservoir properties, fluid composition and depth of occurrence.

Representatives of the Ministry of Energy and the Natural Resources Ministry highly commended the activities of OAO TATNEFT noting the stability of the Company and its ability, to increase volumes of the raw materials production and to construct large-scale facilities even at times of crisis.