Three Days of Rewarding and Successful Discussions, 700+ Delegates, 250+ Presentations at the Largest SPE Event in the Region – The 2017 SPE Russian Petroleum Technology Conference

Three Days of Rewarding and Successful Discussions, 700+ Delegates, 250+ Presentations at the Largest SPE Event in the Region – The 2017 SPE Russian Petroleum Technology Conference

The three-day SPE Russian Petroleum Technology Conference ended on 18 October 2017 in Moscow. Representatives from 170+ foreign and local operating and service companies, government agencies, R&D institutes, universities, and professional associations took part in the conference as delegates. There were large delegations from international and national oil and gas companies, including Belorusneft, Gazprom neft, Zarubezhneft, LUKOIL, NOVATEK, Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz, Tatneft, ВР, Kuwait Oil Company, Statoil, Halliburton, Roxar, Schlumberger, Weatherford and many others. The event brought together more than 700 delegates overall.

The SPE Russian Petroleum Technology Conference always demonstrates the extensive technical programme and the highest quality of presentations. This year programme, consisting of 22 technical and 4 plenary sessions, 5 round tables, knowledge sharing sessions and other events, covered the full range of topical issues important for international and Russian energy complex. There key topics of the conference were well construction, field geology and geophysics, geomechanics, core analysis, big data, integrated projects implementation, hard-to-recover reserves and other issues of equal importance.

The conference opening took place in the first plenary session devoted to Key Drivers and Challenges of Oil and Gas Industry Development in Russia and Worldwide. The moderators of the session were Alexander Sitnikov, Deputy Chief Executive Officer for Geology and Field Development, the Gazprom Neft STC, and Richard Syms, BP, SPE Regional Advisory Committee Cochair.

Geir Tungesvik, Senior Vice President, Drilling & Well, Statoil, made his presentation on Competitive at all Times, in which he mentioned that one of the important ways of building resilience is to improve the way we drill wells thus reducing overall exploration and field development costs.

Other plenary speakers were Gokhan Saygi, President, Russia & Central Asia, Schlumberger, with the report on Improving Performance Efficiency – Key for Success, Anton Ershov, Head of Strategy Resources Practice, Accenture Moscow, and Darcy Spady, 2018 SPE President.

The first-day technical programme continues with the second-panel session Overcoming Technological Barriers in Hard-To-Recover and Unconventional Reserves Development, and the range of technical and knowledge sharing sessions. The reports were presented by Kirill Strizhnev, Executive Director, Bazhen Project, Gazpromneft – Angara, Andrey Potryasov, First Deputy Director, LUKOIL-Engineering, Roman Avershin, Head of enhanced oil recovery department, Surgutneftegas, and Alexey Cheremisin, CREI Associate Director for Experimental Research, Skoltech Center for Hydrocarbon Recovery.

On 16 October, SPE held round tables devoted to the most pressing topics for the last years:

• Aspects and Opportunities of New Russian Reserves Classification, Similarities and Differences between PRMS and 2009 United Nations Framework Classification. Round table format allows to clarify some controversial issues about the new classification, exchange the ideas and experience. The round table gathered experts from State Commission on Mineral Reserves, specialists from operating and service oil and gas companies, and R&D institutes. The speakers who delivered their presentations were Sergey Kolbikov, NOVATEK, Alexander Shpilman, V.I. Shpilman Research and Analytical Centre for the Rational Use of Subsoil, and Alexander Shandrygin, DeGolyer and MacNaughton.

HSE Round Table: Is it an Advantage to be Eco-Friendly? The round table was organized with the support of Marine Research Center, Lomonosov MSU. During this round table the participants raised questions related to environmental safety issues during exploration, production and field operations of oil and gas industry facilities. The experts reached a conclusion on the need to further discuss the detailed schemes for operating and monitoring environmental safety by international, national and industry regulators, and that was included to the agenda of discussion at the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment of the Russian Federation.

The first day of the conference ended with the gala evening coincide with the SPE Anniversary: 60^th anniversary of SPE International, 25^th anniversary of SPE in the region and 10^th anniversary of the SPE Moscow Office in Russia. The evening was held in a warm and friendly atmosphere, and the presenters were Anatoly Zolotukhin, professor of the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, and Andrey Gladkov, 2012-2014 SPE Regional Director. The guests were entertained by the music band playing jazz, sand show devoted to the SPE history in the region, and the most popular among such activities were minting of SPE anniversary coins and caricatures.

Darcy Spady, the 2018 SPE President, played accordion the whole concert with the invited band, and the guests were very impressed by his playing. The celebration culminated in the SPE Birthday Cake cutting.

The SPE Regional Awards Ceremony was also held during this evening. The winners were awarded for their significant input to the industry and SPE activities. Regional Distinguished Corporate Support Award was given to Halliburton.

The seconded started with the panel session Modern Approach to Giant Field Projects. The session moderators were the programme committee co-chairs: Sergey Kolbikov, NOVATEK, Alexander Timchuk, ZapSibNIIGG, and Andrey Kharitonov, Halliburton. The presentations were delivered by the key experts from the leading industry companies:

• The report on The Strategic Project of Gazprom Neft on Yamal – Novy Port – was made by Denis Sugaipov, Head of Major Projects Directorate, Upstream Division at Gazprom Neft, Chief Executive Officer, Gazpromneft – Development.
• A Case Study of Verkhnechonskoye Field: Theory and Practice of Eastern Siberia Complex Reservoirs Development presented by Alexander Timchuk, Deputy General Director, Chief Geologist, VCNG.
• BP Oman Khazzan Field Development Optimization. Martin Rylance, Senior Adviser and Engineering Manager, ВР.
• The Role of Integrated Reservoir Characterization during the Start-Up of Kashagan Field. Nurlan Muratov, Head of Geoscience, NCOC, in his presentation provide an example of the role of an integrated team of geoscientists, reservoir engineers, and surveillance engineers played in the start-up of the giant, carbonate oil field, Kashagan.
• Integrated Projects: Pros & Cons of Some Current Approaches by Ahsan Rahi, Global Director, Integrated Services and Projects, Weatherford.

The round table XXI Century Petroleum Engineers – Who are They? was the follow-up of the 2016 young professionals development round table. ​The participants discussed the following topics:

• What programmes do universities offer to students? Do the programmes meet requirements that companies specify?
• Where should students receive professional knowledge and skills?
• How to arrange real student practice?
• Should universities prepare and provide necessary information and courses for students to become professionals?

The second round table that took place on 17 October was dedicated to the topic that concerns industry for many years Transfer of Technology: A Window of Opportunity for Oil and Gas Equipment Manufacturers. The speakers from the leading companies shared their ideas and best practices: Gazprom neft, Goltsblat BLP, Soyuzexpertiza, Rosgeologia, Gusar, Schlumberger and others. The focus was on the successful examples of localization by local development companies and by oil and gas equipment manufacturers will be addressed during this round table.

The third conference day opened with panel session «From it Solutions to Industry High Efficiency». The presentations that were delivered at the panel sessions were:

• Integrated Modeling and Oil-Gas Assets Evaluation under Uncertainty. Vision, Technological Capabilities, and Challenges». Dimitry Bolotnik, General Manager, Russia and CIS, Vice President, ROXAR, a number of software products that provide a full circle of functionality starting from log data and seismic data interpretation, goes through geological and filtration modeling to support and optimization of surface infrastructure.
• Digital E&P Future, Already Today! Artem Karapetov, Vice-President, Sales Software Integrated Solutions, Schlumberger, covered some examples of how new digital technologies are changing the E&P landscape today and will also discuss next steps (as Schlumberger sees them), that are required for fundamental and long-term changes that shall dramatically improve E&P operations performance efficiency.
• Integrated Approach to Field Development at Different Project Implementation Stages. In his presentation Alexey Yazkov, Deputy General Director, NOVATEK STC, showed the core of integrated approach in field development implemented in NOVATEK. Integrated model case studies were demonstrated in this work for a field at an early stage of production design and for the field under development monitoring.
• Modern Trends in Computational Platforms for Reservoir Modeling. In the presentation, Kirill Bogachev, CTO, Rock Flow Dynamics, gave an overview of the capabilities of the modern hardware platforms for high-performance simulations, and the detailed analysis of the hardware architecture and characteristic features of personal computers and workstations, high-performance clusters, graphical adapters and cloud platforms.

In the last day of the conference, SPE held the round table Database Mining. Big data collection, storing and processing technologies have affected many industry spheres. At this round table participants discussed predictive analytics and highlight current tasks for big data analytics in the oil and gas production industry. The following experts took part in the round table: Dmitry Koroteev, Skoltech, Alexander Sitnikov, Gazpromneft STC, Artem Karapetov, Schlumberger, Sergey Stishenko, Geosteering Technologie, Artyom Semenikhin, IBM Science and Technology Center, Alexander Khaytin, Yandex Data Factory, Timur Imaev and Mikhail Fokin, Nest Lab.

22 technical and knowledge sharing sessions were held overall, which gathered around 80 delegates every day.

The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) expresses their gratitude for the support this year to the programme committee members; sponsors: Schlumberger, Halliburton, Roxar, BP, Gazprom neft, LUKOIL, Statoil, Chevron, Zarubezhneft, Tatneft, Rock Flow Dynamics, Marine Research Center, Lomonosov MSU; Holiday Inn Sokolniki Hotel staff; interpreters; and students Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas who voluntarily helped SPE.

For any queries or to request photographs for the 2017 SPE Russian Petroleum Technology Conference, please contact Lilia Khalmuradova lkhalmuradova@spe.org.