Samotlorneftegaz Restores Over 100 Hectares of Remote Lands Compromised in 1970-1980s
Samotlorneftegaz, a production enterprise of Rosneft Oil Company, is to clean over 100 hectares of heritage land during its winter 2020-2021 remediation campaign. The lands lost their original natural and economic value during the intensive development of the Samotlor field in the 1970s and 1980s.
In order to achieve the best performance and the strategic goal in environmental protection, defined in the Rosneft 2022 Strategy, the Company improves approaches to environmental management, increases the scale of environmental measures and the necessary investments for these purposes.
Samotlorneftegaz was the first in Russia to introduce the method of winter remediation that provides for year-round land clean-up activities. The enterprise also actively practices winter sowing of perennial grasses, which increases the efficiency of the restoration measures carried out.
In four years, the enterprise’s specialists have conducted maintenance work on a total area of more than 600 hectares.
More than 60% of Samotlorneftegaz’s licence area is made up of marshlands and wetland lakes. It is technically impossible to carry out remediation measures on sites with such landscape characteristics during the warm season, which is why about 70% of remediation works on formerly damaged land are performed during the winter period.
An in-house Environmental Remediation Facility has been set up at Samotlorneftegaz to improve environmental safety. The subdivision is in charge of immediate response to pipeline failures and land remediation. The facility has 70 unique and specialised machines at its disposal, including state-of-the-art models that help to efficiently carry out nature remediation work in remote and wetland areas. For instance, ecologists use amphibious excavators. This floating equipment is indispensable for excavation and grading work in highly marshy areas and even on water.
In total, over the 2015-2020 period, Samotlorneftegaz delivered more than 1,300 hectares of remediated land to the state commission with a positive conclusion. The total funding for those activities exceeded 4 billion roubles.
Note for Editors:
Samotlorneftegaz JSC is a major production enterprise of Rosneft Oil Company and the largest industrial facility in the Nizhnevartovsk area. In addition to the Samotlor field, the company is developing the Gun-Yoganskoye, Tyumenskoye, Novomolodezhnoye, Lor-Yoganskoye, East-Tyumenskoye and Malochernogorskoye fields. The scope of license areas exceeds 3,000 square kilometres.
Samotlorneftegaz has been the winner of the national contest “Leader in Russia’s Environmental Protection Activities” for two years in a row. In 2020, the enterprise was commended in two categories, “Environmental Responsibility” and “Leading Environmentally Responsible Upstream Enterprise”.
Rosneft
Information Division
December 11, 2020