Drilling and capital well rework sectors still overwhelmingly belong to Russian contractors, however. Russia is now creating unique service technologies, which are original process solutions of suitable price and quality.
An example of this occurred in mid-February 2009, at a base on the Upper Salym field near the village of Salym (Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District), where a fundamentally new mobile drilling rig was demonstrated. This was the MBU 3200/200-DER, which was developed by specialists of the Russian company Uralmash Drilling Equipment (Yekaterinburg). The rig’s development also involved German engineers, whose participation allowed the new design to take all European requirements for equipment safety and technical characteristics into account.
The mobile drilling rig demonstrated at Salym field has strong competitive advantages. It is a piece of heavy drilling equipment, with a load capacity of 220 tons, capable of drilling to a depth of 10,500 feet. The rig has an adjustable drive and can be operated at an ambient temperature of between –49°F and +104°F. It can also be used for well workover. The rig’s basic equipment is broken down into vehicle-mounted subassemblies that are transported to oil fields and assembled using fifth wheel tractors. Other subassemblies and large units are conveyed by general purpose vehicles. The rig’s modules include all necessary connections, heating systems, control panels, and electrical equipment, and the equipment is certified to API standards. The new rig has been successfully used by specialists at KCA Deutag, the well-known German drilling contractor.
After the demonstration, leading Russian experts stressed that the production of a new-generation drilling rig meeting international standards was a great victory for Russian mechanical engineers. Its use at Russian fields will undoubtedly raise the technological and commercial efficiency of oil and gas projects, and also ensure the environmental safety of drilling processes. Gazprom’s equipment retooling program already contains a line item for the purchase of the MBU 3200/200 DER-M rig, and the first batch of five drilling rigs has already been delivered to replace equipment at the Orenburg gas field.
Another example occurred in February of 2009, when the Russian Hydraulic Machines and Systems investment and industrial group simultaneously won three tenders to deliver pumping and oilfield equipment to Verkhnechonskneftegaz, operating in Eastern Siberia. The total value of tenders won was around 60 million rubles, in a competition where leading foreign companies also participated in the bidding. During this year, Russian manufacturers supplied oil workers with type NPV (“vertical oil booster”) high-performance vertical pumps produced by Nasosenergomash, and also modern equipment for a formation pressure maintenance system (manifold subassemblies) and pumping stations.
In 2009, the Russian company Grasis delivered a mobile nitrogen station to Naryanmarneftegaz LLC, a joint venture of LUKOIL and the American company ConocoPhillips. The station is intended to implement an oil-conditioning process at the South Khylchuyu central collection point. The mobile membrane nitrogen station is designed to produce 250 Nm3/h of 98% pure nitrogen at a pressure of 40 bar.8 The station is packaged in an enclosure having dimensions of 39 × 8 × 8 feet. Control of the station is as simple and convenient as possible, allowing such equipment to be operated by personnel without requiring special training.
The encouraging prospects of the Russian oil and gas equipment market have helped accelerate integration processes. In March 2009, the Russian Integra group announced the creation of a company to service oil and gas equipment. The new enterprise, called Integra-MashServis, was formed on the basis of subdivisions of Uralmash Drilling Equipment (Yekaterinburg). The new company’s main task is to provide a broad range of highly skilled services on an expedited basis in the areas of oil and gas equipment industrial safety expert review, oil and gas equipment examination and technical diagnosis of oil and gas equipment, drilling equipment overhaul, drilling rig and equipment upgrading, and oil and gas equipment servicing.
Integra group management considers the prospects for oil and gas equipment servicing to be very favorable as a market segment. They estimate that around 70% of the active drilling equipment in Russia has become obsolete, and that a significant portion of the growing demand for drilling rigs (the result of increased drilling volume) remains completely unsatisfied. This situation creates great demand, on the part of production companies, for comprehensive service of obsolete equipment, including overhaul and upgrading, provision of spare parts, and maintenance. Demand is also increased by the fact that Russian oil companies are now actively replacing imported field equipment and technology.
Russian products are now finding demand in other countries. Russian oil machine-building enterprises were first able to enter the Central European market in 2009. For example, Korvet (Kurgan) supplied the Serbian company Naftna Industry a Srbije (NIS) with a batch of “Christmas trees” for oil production, equipment that the Serbian company had earlier procured from the American companies Weatherford and Cameron. Moreover, this company also ordered oil producing pumps made by Alnas (part of the Rimera Group), and a contract was signed with the Ozna Group (Ufa) to deliver Impuls units for well flow rate measurement.
On March 25, 2010, LUKOIL-Kaliningradmorneft (a wholly owned subsidiary of LUKOIL) introduced the Yermak, a new Russian drilling rig, at its structural metalwork production plant in Kaliningrad. The Yermak features a unique hydraulic travel system that allows it to move incrementally in all directions and to rotate 360 degrees about its axis. A characteristic of this rig is that it can be used for both development and exploratory drilling. It has a load capacity of 496 tons and can drill down to 21,325 feet. It is equipped with a 2,000-horsepower drawworks, three 1,600-horsepower mud pumps, a 550-ton top drive, and a 1,150-horse-power rotary table. The Yermak drilling rig has been modified to operate under various climatic zones, and in particular, for work under cold Far North conditions and at high temperatures in hot and humid climates.
On the Agenda: Energy Conservation
Foreign media reports sometimes claim that the Russian economy wastes too much energy and, unlike European countries, is very slow at implementing energy conservation programs. This not-so-simple issue also warrants examination.
International Energy Agency data do show that the GDP energy/ output ratio in Russia is 2.5 times higher than in the US, and 3.5 times higher than in Great Britain. Even Canada, with its harsh climatic conditions, consumes only half as much energy per unit of production as Russia does.
Unfortunately, 30–40% of the energy resources our country produces are lost in its worn-out utility networks. Ministry of Energy data indicate that Russia does lose around 440 million TCE every year due to the lack of energy conservation.
Today, growth of the country’s production and energy capacities requires enormous resources. At the same time, energy shortages in certain regions are due not only to high rates of economic growth, but also to low efficiency in the use of gas, electrical, and thermal energy. This is why increasing the economic efficiency of Russian companies and, consequently, strengthening their competitiveness through the use of energy-saving technologies, production upgrades, and their own R&D in this area are becoming highly relevant subjects. Data from the Russian Center for Energy Efficiency (CENEf) indicate that while the potential growth in the production of energy resources is approximately 110 million TCE, the potential for energy conservation is 408–430 million TCE. The Center’s experts concluded that if the margin of energy efficiency improvement in Russia were to be completely exploited, Russia’s economy would confidently continue to grow for 80 years, without having to increase energy production and consumption.