President of the Association of Oil and Gas Equipment Manufacturers, Alexander Romanikhin, took part in the press conference in Yekaterinburg last Friday that was dedicated to commissioning of Gazprom’s new drilling rig.  Answering the journalists’ questions about the Ural manufacturers, Romanikhin  said, “Today, a lot is said about the need for state support of the Russian machinery industry, and measures to protect national manufacturers.  These are right things, but we have not seen any support and protectionism so far.  However, there are manufacturing companies that demonstrate excellent performance without any support. The case in point is Uralmash-Burovoye Oborudovanie that successfully competes with well-known American, German and Chinese suppliers.  Uralmash-Burovoye Oborudovanie won the tender for a contract to supply drilling rigs to a gas producing company  and signed the largest contract in the Russian oil and gas equipment industry. Thanks to the efforts of the Ural manufacturer, Russian oilfield equipment was first supplied to western contractors who never used Russian equipment before”. 

 

Romanikhin told the journalists that Uralmash-Burovoye Oborudovanie offers the highest wages in the manufacturing sector of the Sverdlovsk region, and demonstrates the highest production growth. “Uralmash-VNIIBT Group creates jobs in many Russian manufacturing plants. Drilling rig is a complex facility, and more than a hundred companies are involved in the manufacturing process.  Uralmash-VNIIBT Group revived the Tyumen Shipyard and Kostroma Plant.  Today, these two plants are growth leaders in their respective areas”, Romanikhin said. Speaking about the reasons for the company’s success, Romanikhin pointed to the great potential and R&D capabilities of its personnel. “It is not too hard to launch a production process from zero level, to lease, to buy, but it is much more difficult with the staff.  The top managers of Uralmash-VNIIBT Group were wise enough to keep the engineering division functioning and to expand it substantially. Today, Uralmash-VNIIBT can boast of the strongest design office in the industry. The efforts of this design office allow to introduce new equipment every year.   And the efforts of this design office allowed to establish cooperation with Gazprom, Surgutneftegaz, Rosneft and other producers now working together with the company to create unique drilling rigs”.

 

 “Over the past two years, the Ural manufacturer has demonstrated great achievements.  It created a family of unique domestic equipment that is supplied to internal and international markets, and is exported to CIS countries and overseas. It is drilling equipment development that determines progress in the oil and gas sector. It is drilling operations that allow to increase oil production and ensure hydrocarbon reserves increment. Therefore, the efforts of the Ural manufacturing company should be highly praised, and the builders of unique Russian drilling rigs should be given state awards”.