Transneft and USTU: New Level of Cooperation

On Wednesday, February 12, led by the Company's first vice-president Maxim Grishanin a delegation of OJSC AK Transneft paid visit to Ukhta State University. The visit was aimed at getting acquainted with the possibilities of Ukhta State Technical University, which is a center for training engineers to be employed by the company's enterprises, in particular, by JSC Transneft-Sever.

During the meeting with the guests USTU Rector, Professor Nikolay Tskhadaya informed them about the university main performance indicators. One of the strategic directions of the university activities is cooperation with JSC Transneft-Sever in personnel training. For example, circa 680 people out of 3,000 employees of the company are USTU graduates.

"Training of specialists for your company is the long-term plan, and this does not only impose  determinate obligations on us to provide quality training of students, but also significantly affects the material equipment of the university. We can be proud of what we have done using the funds the company allocated to us," said Professor Nikolay Tskhadaya.

According to Maxim Grishanin, the company executives are concerned to add more systemic features to specialists' training and retraining. This requires the development of new educational standards, and in this work Transneft counts upon participation of Ukhta State Technical University. This applies especially to training and retraining of employees of metrological services.

"Recently, approaches to training of engineering personnel for the company have changed somewhat", explained the vice president. "In particular, we realized that in addition to oil and gas universities in Moscow, there are, for example, USTU and Tomsk Polytechnic University - the most in-demand professionals for our industry are studying at these universities today."

After the meeting with the rector the university employees showed the Transneft's delegation capabilities of laboratories and laboratory stands, which are used in training of future specialists of the company. Guests were also given a tour of the USTU Museum History and of teaching and practical test site at the Mining and Petroleum College.

At the end of the visit Maxim Grishanin answered reporters' questions. In particular, about the prospects of the company Transneft in Ukhta he said the following:

"It's not so long that JSC Transneft Sever has the Engineering Centre for oil transportation automated control systems. We have seen how the activities assigned to the center are carried out. The center's location in Ukhta is due mainly to the fact that there is a training complex such as the university. Our second goal is to consider approaches for the development of the Northern Oil Pipelines (SMN). This is due to the upcoming rise of heavy oils from Yaregskoye and Usinskoye fields. The volume of heavy oil on pipelines today is increasing and it results in some difficulties with which we must deal. And the work begins here in Ukhta and at Ukhta university engaged in training of metrologists and experts in Computerized Process Control System."

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The delegation of OJSC AK Transneft included: Oleg Kapitulov, Director of Department of Information Technology, Sergey Filippov, deputy director of Department of Information Technology, Alexander Yakovlev, Head of Computerized Process Control System Department, Andrey Shiryaev, Deputy Director General of the Research Institute of Oil and Petroleum Products Transportation, Oleg Zolotukhin, head of the Department of oil and oil products' accounting systems.

On the part of JSC Transneft-Sever the University was visited by Director General of JSC Transneft-Sever Alexey Polyakov, Deputy Director General Viktor Smyshlyaev, Head of Technical Department Vladimir Fedorov, representatives of the press.