ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION AND SAVINGS

For over five years Surgutneftegas has been implementing its program of equipment and materials reuse. Total savings amounted in 2005 to RUR 1.485 bn.

These efforts have translated into lower demand for new equipment and materials at the Company’s fields. For example, compared to 2002 when one development well required 17 new sucker rods for bottom-hole pumps and on average 2.42 tubes, in 2005 the demand dropped to 5 rods and 1.88 tubes respectively. Total reuse of these materials amounted in 2005 to 522.3 thousand rods and 735.2 thousand tubes.

Substantial annual volumes of equipment reused by the Company equaled 240.8 thousand guide apparatus of electrically driven centrifugal pumps (ESP), 8.7 thousand process pipes and 3.7 thousand bottom-hole pumps. This list also includes valves and well-controlled equipment, drill pipes and turbodrills, hydrotongs and ESP blocks, and etc.

With 500-700 tons of waste tyres accumulated every year, tyres recycling remained one of the burning issues for the Company for a number of years. Due to high transportation costs the Company could not recycle them at plants located behind the Urals. In 2005, we purchased a USD 5 mn recycling plant to reduce tyres to bits and use it for asphalt works. The plant’s pilot operation is scheduled for this summer.

“Our approach to waste recycling is based on nature protection and low waste technologies”, says Lyubov Malyshkina, Nature Protection Department Head of Surgutneftegas. “Equipment and materials reuse, lower consumption of construction materials via clean drill sludge applied as soil, cleaning and reuse of waste engine oils translates in higher environmental protection of operations as well as results in true savings”.

Press Service of OJSC “Surgutneftegas”