Center for Liquid Hydrocarbons reports progress made in 2023
The Center’s supervisory board convened today under the chairmanship of Rais (Governor) of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov.
Among the participants were Minister of Industry and Trade of Tatarstan Oleg Korobchenko, First Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Tatarstan Andrey Pominov, Rector of KFU Lenar Safin, President of the Tatarstan Academy of Sciences Rifkat Minnikhanov, Director of the All-Russian Research Institute of Ecology Daniil Sorokin, General Director of Tatarstan Petroleum Chemistry Investment Holding Rafinat Yarullin, General Director of Communication and Petroleum Chemistry Investment JSC Valery Sorokin, Vice-Rector for Earth Sciences Danis Nurgaliev, Director of Russian Energy Agency Oleg Zhdaneev, and others.
The Rais welcomed everyone and said that the Board aims to analyze current developments and assist the Center in its growth.
“The Center for Liquid Hydrocarbons has been rightfully seen as an international research platform from the get-go. Our Republic’s research community and the industry have amassed unique knowledge in hard-to-recover hydrocarbons. This knowledge is now in demand in many countries,” said he.
Vice-Rector Nurgaliev spoke about the Center’s successful cooperation with oil companies in Russia and abroad. Its project turnover in 2023 amounted to 1.5 billion rubles, “We work on economical, environmentally friendly and energy-efficient technologies of exploration, survey and recovery of oil which are tested at our partner companies’ fields and facilities. A significant part of them are in collaboration with Tatneft, as well as with other notable companies of Russia, Cuba, India, Kuwait, China, Oman, and other countries.”
He added that the Center has significantly advanced in its laboratory capacity for enhanced oil recovery experiments.
“We can now test the efficiency of any chemical EOR technique on samples from a certain deposit in our laboratory in reservoir conditions with micro-tomography visualization of processes, create a mathematical model on a pore level and complete macroscopic modeling of a reagent at a whole reservoir scale,” continued the Vice-Rector.
He emphasized that only a few laboratories in the world are capable of that.
Another development in 2023 was the establishment of the Center for Industrial Engineering of Specialized Reagents for Enhanced Oil Recovery.
“We are talking about certain surfactants, catalysts, and polymers. We have conducted over 20 test injections of homemade reagents. They are in active use by Russian and foreign oil and oil field companies; a project is in the works to open a small tonnage production line before the fall of 2024,” mentioned Dr Nurgaliev.
He then detailed some of the more significant achievements of the Center for Liquid Hydrocarbons in 2023.
The Rais had some words of praise for the listed accomplishments, “All the KPIs have been met, and some have been exceeded, in particular, the number of prominent researchers at the Center, the number of commercial contracts, and the number of patents. An important and big effort has been undertaken. The breakthrough technologies developed here have a huge potential for the country. They can keep us competitive for many years.”
In conclusion, Secretary of the Supervisory Board, Deputy Director for Innovation of the Institute of Geology and Petroleum Technologies Vladislav Sudakov reported on the proposed changes for the Center’s development program. A reshuffle also took place in the international advisory council of the Center per Rector Lenar Safin’s proposal.