XI Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2019

Royal Dutch Shell is one of the largest foreign investors in Russia. The company participates in development of the Sakhalin-II Project. In this article we put special emphases on the mutually profitable cooperation with the Russian gas concern Gazprom during their work on the project and the innovative methods first applied on a Russian market.

Actually, Shell has been working in Russia since the end of the nineteenth century. Russia was always attractive for foreign investors. In 1891 brothers Sam and Marcus Samuel signed a contract with Rothschild’s company BNITO (Baku Oil and Trade Company) for the supply of Russian kerosene to the Far East. In 1892 the first oil tanker of the Samuel’s design passed through the Suez Canal. The ship of new design allowed to increase the volume of transported oil and the passage through the Suez Canal allowed to reduce the route length in more than 4000 sea miles or 7400 kilometres. Samuel brothers had achieved a revolution in the oil transport. This success encouraged Samuel brothers to establish the Shell Company. The history shows that due to Russia’s oil the company has become one of the five largest production companies in the world.

Nowadays Shell is one of the largest direct foreign investors into the Russian economy, working in various business areas. Shell has in operation about 200 fuel stations in Russia.

Shell operates in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous district. The joint-stock venture Shell and Gazprom Neft - Salym Petroleum Development (SPD) - produce oil at the Salym group of fields. Upper Salym is the part of this group, which includes West Salym and Vadelyp oil fields discovered in the 1960s-1980s. The total area of licensed territory exceeds 2000 square kilometers, and oil reserves are estimated as 140 million tons. Shell were the first in the development of so-called “smart wells” and applied its technology (for the first time in Russia) on one of the deposits of the Salym - Vadelypskoye group. This is a complex innovative system designed for remote monitoring of oil production and injection of inhibitors into the reservoir. It allows to make separate records of production on every layer in real time, as well as to regulate the pumping of water in the injection wells.

SPD has introduced another new technology - “smart fields”. It allows to control oil production remotely. Specialists receive data from well and if it is necessary change parameters of the well equipment. In addition, a special information system helps to track breakdowns in the operation of the well. If the production of well exceeds the limits of the established range, the automatic notification will immediately go to the operator via email. This technology allows to avoid accident with well equipment and pump equipment. As a result unproductive time for maintenance and repair equipment is decreased. Production level on wells with these technologies exceed estimated level in 2-2,5%. In 2008 this modern equipment was installed in the first wells in Russia. Today, a complex of “smart” technologies has been installed to the all wells of the Salym group of fields. All the producing wells of the Salym group are provided with automatic echo sounders, as well as remote monitoring of control systems for the injection of inhibitors is made.

One of the most significant SPD projects is ASP enhanced oil recovery technology. This method is based on the injection of a reagent which consists of an Anionic surfactant, Soda and Polymer into the reservoir. Conventional producing methods allow to extract about 30-40% of oil in reservoirs. ASP using the methods of enhanced recovery, allows to extract additional hydrocarbons from 15 to 30%.

Shell launched its Torzhok lubricant plant in Russia in 2012. The plant is designed to produce 180,000 tons (200 million liters) of lubricants per year, which makes it one of the largest project of its kind in Shell's structure. It produces a wide range of motor oils, oils for marine engines, industrial lubricants, as well as hydraulic and transmission oils.

The most significant project Shell in Russia is Sakhalin II - the first project for the production of liquefied natural gas in Russia. It is one of the biggest oil and gas developments in the world. Production is about 9.6 milliontonnes of natural gas per year.

Sakhalin II is one of the world’s largest integrated, export-oriented giant enterprise. Its infrastructure includes three offshore platforms, an onshore processing facility, 300 kilometres of offshore pipelines and 1,600 kilometres of onshore pipelines, an oil export terminal and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant. In 2016, Sakhalin-2 met 6% of the LNG market in the Asia-Pacific region.

Shell is planning to build Baltic LNG plant in partnership with Gazprom. The plant would be built near the Ust-Luga Port. It would have two trains with total capacity of 10 million tonnes of LNG per year.

Bibliography

Свободная энциклопедия Википедия [Электронный ресурс] / Режим доступа: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Dutch_Shell, свободный. – Загл. с экрана.

Манвелов Н. В. 125 лет Shell в России: 1892–2017 / Н. В. Манвелов. – Москва: ФАКТОТУМС, 2016. – 208 с.: ил.

Официальная страница компании Shell International B.V. в сети интернет [Электронный ресурс] / Режим доступа: https://www.shell.com/about-us/major-projects/sakhalin.html, свободный. – Загл. с экрана.

Свободная энциклопедия Википедия [Электронный ресурс] / Режим доступа: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin-II, свободный. – Загл. с экрана.