Page 12 - FSUOGM Week 02 2020

FSUOGM PROJECTS & COMPANIES FSUOGM
Lukoil oil refinery catches fire
RUSSIA
The incident could motivate Lukoil to revive plans to sell the plant.
A fire broke out at the Lukoil-operated Ukhta oil refinery in Russia’s Komi republic on January 9, resulting in one injury.
The fire occurred at 16:49 local time at a die- sel hydrodewaxing unit, and was extinguished at 01:14 on January 10, Lukoil said in a statement. Repair and restoration work is underway at the affected unit, located a safe distance away from the refinery’s other facilities.
Other units are operating normally, Lukoil said, and the production of commercial prod- ucts continues. There are no restrictions on the plant’s intake of oil, the company said, which has been confirmed by state oil pipeline operator Transneft.
The Ukhta refinery is one of Russia’s oldest, having entered service in 1934. It is capable of processing 4mn tonnes (80,000 barrels per day (bpd)) of oil, but for two years has operated at less than half this capacity. Lukoil has strug- gle to generate profit at the refinery over the
years and said in 2017 it was considering sell- ing the plant under a plan to focus more on its upstream business.
Russian margins have been tight in recent years, partly because of government taxation aimed at motivating refiners to modernise their plants to produce lighter fuels such as gaso- line and diesel. The Ukhta refinery is not only Lukoil’s smallest but also its most basic, with a Nelson complexity index of only 4.2. In contrast, the company’s largest plants in Perm, Volgograd and Nizhny Novgorod are rated at 9.4, 9.4 and 7.3 respectively.
The Ukhta plant also produces much more fuel oil, the global price of which plummeted ahead of the introduction of stricter IMO emis- sions standards for shipping that came into force this year.
Depending on the extent of the damage the fire has caused, the incident may prompt Lukoil
to renew its divestment
plans. ™
community on board.”
Igor Gorkov, CEO of Nexign,
commented “We are confident that Nexign’s strong track record of bringing high-tech products to the global market will be of help in this new venture. For me, this is a very interesting experiment to introduce our knowledge and skills to an industry that is new to us, and I am glad that our company’s many years of expertise in developing complex business support systems is seeing demand outside our traditional market, the telecoms sector.”
Andrey Belevtsev, CDO of Gazprom Neft’s, commented “Our company is expanding into developing modern digital solutions that are scalable across the whole industry. This new venture will allow us and our partners to implement our solutions, thanks to our unique expertise in the digital transformation of major industrial assets.”
Yulia Shutkina, vice president of ICS Holding, said “In addition to the above solutions, we have also been seeing major businesses take an interest in automating processes such as the verification and filtration of industrial data, virtual flow metering, nodal well analysis, production profiling for 90-day integrated operating plans, and condition monitoring and failure forecasting for electrically driven centrifugal pumps. The product also has great potential for a resource planning product for oil extraction network
RUSSIA
Gazprom’s ESP sees record sales
Gas sales on Gazprom Export’s Electronic Sales Platform (ESP) climbed to a record daily high on January 9 of 477mn cubic metres of gas, according to company data.
Sales have averaged 225 mcm per day
so far in January – the highest monthly average since the platform was launched in September 2018. The previous monthly high was set in July last year and was 121 mcm per day.
The growth comes after Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz signed a new five-year gas transit deal on December 30, easing concerns of supply disruptions.
January 10 2020
Gazprom Neft sets up digital JV
Gazprom Neft and ICS Holding have set up a joint venture to develop digital products for the oil and gas industry and roll them out in the Russian and global markets.
The development strategy for the new joint venture is aimed at addressing the challenge of digitally transforming the oil
NEWS IN BRIEF
and gas sector through the application
of Industry 4.0 technologies. The most promising projects include a support system for making investment decisions for working with oil and gas deposits, solutions for process safety based on computer vision, and a process automation tool for the integrated modelling of production assets.
The Gazprom Neft team will provide industry expertise and trial new technologies on industrial assets, while Nexign, part of ICS Holding, will work on introducing software product development processes, as well as building a team of developers.
There will be around 150 professionals working towards solving the company’s technological challenges in 2020, and the team will expand as the venture grows.
In addition, various subsidiaries of ICS Holding in the IT sector will offer their expertise towards ensuring comprehensive support for new developments and their effective integration into the joint venture’s business processes.
Eduard Ashrafyan, CEO of the joint venture, commented: “We are focusing
on developing and promoting products targeted at major industrial clients. We will strengthen our cooperation with Russian enterprises and, in the medium term, launch our activity on the international market. The company is already open to bringing strong partners from the industrial
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Week 02 15•January•2020