OREANDA-NEWS. October 18, 2010. President of Tatarstan Minnikhanov addressed the meeting of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan with the annual message to the Republican Parliament. In his report to the deputies and in the annex to this document the President paid a lot of attention to the oil industry branch. The head of the Republic of Tatarstan noted the important role of TATNEFT in the sustainable development of the Republic’s economy, reported the press-centre of TATNEFT.

In his speech at the meeting of the State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan R. Minnikhanov noted that the oilmen of Tatarstan planned to produce more than 32 million tons of crude oil in 2010 with TATNEFT accounting for the production of 25.8 million tons. He also said that the crude oil production in the Republic was stable and had not fallen below 32 million tons in the past years.

The amount of 21.6 million tons of crude oil has been produced in the Republic for 8 months of 2010, which corresponds to the level of the same period of the last year. TATNEFT accounts for the production of about 17.2 million tons with the share of the small oil producing companies amounting to 4.4 million tons. For the purpose of maintaining competitiveness the oilmen continue to work on reducing crude oil production operating costs.

The President named implementation of the Program of development of the fuel and energy complex of Tatarstan in 2006-2020 in the part of securing the planned oil production volumes and production and exploration drilling to be the main task of the oil companies of the Republic.

The President noted that Tatarstan possessed significant reserves of extra-viscous oil. According to various estimates the resources of the extra-viscous oil range from 1.5 to 7 billion tons. It is stated in the document that TATNEFT was the first Russian Oil Company, which started pilot development of extra-viscous oil fields in 2006. Ashalchinskoye field was chosen as the main target for development, where over 18 thousand tons of extra-viscous oil were produced with application of the steam assisted gravity drainage method in 2009. Currently, the Company continues to develop Ashalchinskoye and Mordovo-Karmalskoye bitumen deposits. TATNEFT plans to increase the production of extra-viscous oil to 27 thousand tons in 2010.
 
Rustam Minnikhanov called continuation of construction of TANECO refinery and petrochemical plants complex in Nizhnekamsk one of the major directions of crude oil refining development of oil in Tatarstan, which would allow for deep processing of crude oil produced in the Republic and producing petroleum and petrochemical products.

In 2010 TANECO will commission the first starting complex of the refinery with capacity of 7 million tons of oil per year and will produce the first commercial products.