OREANDA-NEWS. February 14, 2011. Artyom Sidorov, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of the Republic of Tatarstan, visited TATNEFT in the framework of a working visit. This was the first visit of the new minister to the major oil company of the Republic of Tatarstan in the course of which the Minister had a meeting with the management of TATNEFT and visited a number of industrial facilities for the purpose of studying the experience of the oil company in the field of environmental protection activity, reported the press-centre of TATNEFT.

During the meeting of the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources with the top managers of the Company, Shafagat Takhautdinov, General Director, briefed Artyom Sidorov on the activities of Tatneft in the field of nature protection, told about the facilities identified in the program of the visit and also referred to the technological activities promoting conservation of flora and fauna of the region.

Later Artyom Sidorov, accompanied by the principal and leading specialists of TATNEFT visited industrial facilities. The first visited enterprise was a specialized facility for processing oil containing wastes at "Industrial ecology". The Minister got acquainted here with the technology of processing both liquid and solid wastes of the oil production.

Also, the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of the Republic visited a crude oil delivery and acceptance point ("Almetyevsk") of NGDU Almetyevneft where 6 NGDUs and more than 20 small oil companies make the delivery of commercial sour crude into the trunk oil pipeline system of AK Transneft. The Minister was familiarized with the technology of crude oil treatment and a hydrocarbon vapor recovery unit (VRU) at joint SIKN No. 224 (SIKN - a system of measuring the oil quality parameters). According to the employees, introduction of VRUs not only has improved the condition of the atmosphere, but also has reduced process losses from tanks. Today 43 units of this kind operate at TATNEFT and 8 of them operate at NGDU Almetyevneft.

At oil and gas production shop No. 1 of NGDU Almetyevneft the Minister got acquainted with the automated process control system (APCS), where he was told about the integrated control, carried out with application of KIS "ARMITS", "Truboprovod", ArcGis, ARM "Ecolog" and video monitoring. He had an opportunity to observe in the real time mode all necessary information arriving to the operator control room, where decisions are taken on the basis thereof.
Today, the Company not only provides for its own needs in tubular products with internal and external protective coating, but also sells its products to outside customers.

The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources of the Republic of Tatarstan highly appraised the environmental focusing of the Company and noted that its wealth of experience and innovational potential in the environmental protection area deserved attention and study as a true example in solving environmental problems.