Rosneft United Research and Development Centre Celebrates Its 15th Anniversary

The Rosneft United Research and Development Centre (RN-RDC) celebrates the 15th anniversary of its foundation. At the moment, RN-RDC includes 29 design and research institutes, as well as 44 competence centres that employ more than 17,000 people in total. The total economic impact from the RN-RDC activities is estimated at more than 150 billion roubles.

RN-RDC is the basic unit for making scientific and technical decisions in all areas of activities of the Company, from exploration to product marketing. The Complex provides 100 per cent support for the Company's geological work and 100 per cent support for Rosneft's production projects' documentation.

RN-RDC supports the drilling of the most complex horizontal wells (more than 3,000 operations annually). In September the construction of the downhole splitter with four horizontal boreholes was completed at the Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye field, a record for the ancient Riphean deposits. The total length of the well is 5,280 metres, the length of the horizontal section is 2,220 metres. Due to using of the innovative method – geoseismic analysis – the drilling penetration effectiveness during the well construction was 99%. The method was developed by the specialists of the Drilling Support Centre of the corporate Institute for Geology and Development of Fossil Fuels (IGiRGI). The new approach allowed predicting multiple tectonic faults, designing the well most accurately, and providing the high production rate successfully.

To ensure the information and technological independence of the Company is one of the key tasks of the Complex. RN-RDC operates all geotechnical information of the Company (over 1900 TB of data) and implements its own information solutions for creating digital twins of real objects (over 70 thousand operations).

RN-RDC has developed and implemented the own line of science-intensive software in geology, design, and development monitoring of the oil and gas fields. The direct economic impact from the introduction of its own software amounted to more than 1.2 billion rubles.

For instance, RN-RDC has developed and successfully implemented the first industrial hydraulic fracturing simulator RN-GRID in Eurasia, which ensures the implementation of all operations and engineering evaluations necessary for fracturing design. By now, the specialists of the RN-GRP service subsidiary have conducted 10,000 well hydraulic fracturing operations with full-cycle designing with the use of this simulator.

RN-RDC works with the universities collaboratively and provides the academic licenses of the corporate software for training qualified young specialists. Presently 210 academic licenses of the RN-KIN, RN-GRID, RN-KIM, RosPump software products have been provided (the exclusive rights for the software belong to PJSC Rosneft). Such cooperation allows training qualified specialists as for the Company as for the whole oil and gas industry of the country. It also allows young specialists to be active in production processes after graduation. Besides the creation of fundamental departments in the academic partners, RN-RDC uses innovative tools to attract talented specialists; in particular, Rosneft organizes the large IT competitions (hackathons) to solve the tasks from true-life work practice.

In 2019, RosneftSeismicChallenge, the first seismic data analysis hackathon in the Company's history, was held. The championship became one of the largest international competition for IT developers of the oil and gas industry in which 490 teams from 9 countries participated. In 2020, a marathon of IT competitions is being planned. It will contain three events: machine learning Hackathon of Three Cities, the Hackathon for roboteer programmers, and the Rosneft Proppant Check Challenge Hackathon (RPCC-2020). The final of the great IT marathon will take place in November 2020 in Moscow.

As part of research activities, the RN-RDC Arctic Research Centre has organized 26 field studies upon the results of which the environmental atlases «Kara Sea», «Laptev Sea» and «Marine Mammals of the Russian Arctic and the Far East» have been issued.

To increase the effectiveness of project solutions and the quality of project work, the specialists of RN-RDC are implementing the Company Standard Design System (STPK). More than 280 standard solutions are developed, and the economic impact from their implementation is estimated at more than 36 billion roubles.

Among the most significant technological results of RN-RDC activities in oil refining and petrochemistry are the creation of its own diesel hydroprocessing catalyst, which efficiency was higher than of foreign analogues; production technologies of own Euro 5 lube oils and gasoline additives; as well as the creation of ultra-light weight proppant, the use of which in hydraulic fracturing will provide the Company with additional production in the amount of more than 1 million tons per year.

Rosneft United Research and Development Centre performs work not only for the Company's subsidiaries but also for other clients. Currently, RN-RDC customer portfolio consists of more than 100 companies. The growth in the amount of external orders increases the economic efficiency of the Complex for the Company, and also promotes the international standing and image of Rosneft Oil Company as a technological leader.

Building up competencies and entering the external market, including the international one, is one of the priorities of the Corporate Research and Development Complex. Presently, the Company has three joint ventures with foreign leaders in scientific and technical cooperation including the design and creation of special technic and the design of oil production and processing objects with the use of 3D modeling methods. In the field of information technology, RN-RDC works collaboratively with the leading companies in geology and field development application software. In the near future their number in key areas of operations will increase.

Rosneft
Information Division
September 23, 2020