Russia has reached a critical stage in the life of its long-lived petroleum industry, and is now forging ahead with plans to both extend the life of its mature areas and develop new regions. With many of the country’s fields explored in Soviet times now depleted or in the latter stages of development – but with vast areas still unexplored or undeveloped including the Arctic shelf – an outstanding line-up of oil & gas experts will meet at the region’s leading technical event to map out the way ahead.
Rosneft Vice President, Mr Mikhail Efimovich Stavskiy, is Chairman of the Executive Committee for the 2010 SPE Russian Oil & Gas Exploration and Production Technical Conference & Exhibition, which is being held 26-28th October in Moscow. He described development of the Russian shelf and Arctic oil fields as “a serious challenge for all companies” and highlighted that shelf operations, particularly the Arctic, call for the use and in some cases creation of special technologies.
“First of all, it is a question of technologies which will allow an increase in operating times on the shelf, above all on the Arctic shelf where the ice-free period is only 3 months. This includes the creation of platforms which can work in the icy conditions of the Arctic regions, construction of ice-class tankers, building of the subsurface structures for safe operation of wells as well as of underground facilities for treatment and pumping of oil. They are to be created in the near future,” he said. All this, Mr Stavskiy added, will be necessary to turn the forecast reserves into real production resources.
This year’s show is the third edition of the premier conference and exhibition, and will be held in Pavilion 75 at the All-Russia Exhibition Centre (VVC) in Moscow under the overall theme ‘Best Practices and Innovations for Mature and Frontier Developments’.
Russian opportunities – “The time has come to develop new regions”
Mars Khasanov, Director for Science at Rosneft, is co-chairman of the Programme Committee for the conference. Discussing the overall theme choice, he said: “We have formulated this topic for SPE Russian Oil and Gas 2010 for a number of reasons. At present, the petroleum industry of Russia is at a critical stage. The fields explored in Soviet times are depleted, most of them being at a stage of late development. The time has come to develop new regions: Eastern Siberia, shelf fields, especially the Arctic shelf. In this situation we should engage best practices so that we can - with minimal capital investments - ensure profitable development of new regions.”
He stressed the need to continue maximising production from existing regions “but the most actual long-term task consists of developing the new regions. Only using new technologies will allow us to do it cost effectively. To pull together forces and resources for transition to the new areas, we need to use as much as possible the potential and infrastructure of the existing regions. Therefore, these two classes of fields are incorporated in one topic. It is clear that for development of greenfields, as well as for the brown fields, new technologies and best practices are required. This is the topic of this Conference.”
Each day the conference will feature panel and technical sessions, as well as topical luncheons, all with simultaneous translation available. The technical programme is focusing on six disciplines, with presentations on Health, Safety & Environment; Geology and Geophysics; Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering; Well Construction; Facilities, Construction and Projects; and Production Operations.
Mr Khasanov added the entire spectrum of upstream technologies will be discussed: “For us it is important to learn about technologies which are new to us. First of all about the method of development of low-permeability fields. Nowadays, almost 60% of residual resources lie in formations whose permeability is nearing 1mD. In the past such resources were considered to be sub-standard. Enhanced development of low-permeability fields and construction of high technology wells with applications of formation hydrofracturing have become priority technologies for us. While working on the problem of increasing recoverability, it is important to find solutions to the issue of engineering smart wells, which allow the extraction of the maximum quantity of oil, still within profitable production, while intelligently controlling the production flows and downhole equipment. All these topics have formed the basis of the program for SPE Russian Oil and Gas 2010”.
Companies and organisations represented on the Executive Committee include Rosneft, RITEK, Gazprom- Neft, SibNAC (Siberian Scientific Analytical Centre), Chevron Neftegaz, TNK-BP, ExxonMobil Russia, Statoil, Shtokman Development AG, Russneft, Salym Petroleum Development, IRDC, GKZ, Schlumberger, Halliburton, Weatherford, Oil & Gas Research Institute, Modeling Technologies Center, Russian Society of Petroleum Engineers, Burovaya company Eurasia, Gubkin Russian State Oil & Gas University, Moscow State University, and the Oil & Gas Industrialists Association of Russia.
Major players exhibiting at RO&G 2010
The 2010 event will feature an exhibition with a host of innovative technologies and solutions on display that have been developed and implemented for use in Russia’s varying but equally harsh environments. Companies taking part include Rosneft, Tatneft, RITEK, TNK-BP, Tatneft, Halliburton, Schlumberger, GE Oil & Gas, as well as country pavillions from Norway and China.
The SPE Russian Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Technical Conference and Exhibition is organised by the long-established event partnership between Reed Exhibitions Ltd. and the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).
Visit www.russianoilgas.com / www.russianoilgas.ru to view the latest information, watch video interviews and access further background information.
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