In February-March 2003, the General Metrological Laboratory commissioned yet another two units, one for repairs and calibration of deep-earth level gages and dynamographs, which are used to determine oil-bearing strata position and wellhead pressure, and the other employed to calibrate and repair fuel flow meters installed in the vehicular petrol filling stations. Before that, in January this year, the Laboratory’s experts launched a unit for checking of current transformers.

June 2003, the Company is planning to set to work the automated vehicular tank calibrator. This unit will be used to graduate underground petroleum, oil and lubricant storage tanks.

Dmitry Bakharev, the Laboratory’s head, points out, that over the past 5 years of the Laboratory’s existence as Surgutneftegas’s structural unit, it has increased the annual number of repairs of measuring devices from 9 thousand measurers to 46 thousand. The higher efficiency has been achieved without increasing the number of experts in charge of these activities. On the whole, the Laboratory is able to repair and test over 500 different measuring and automation devices.

Surgutneftegas’s Metrological Laboratory has a unique range of calibration instruments and provides metrological services for many companies working in Western Siberia, such as LUKoil, Yukos, TNK, Tyumenenergo and Gazprom.

According to Vladimir Sukharev, the Company’s Chief Metrologist and a corresponding member of Academy of Metrology and Standardization of the Russian Federation, Surgutneftegas’s metrologists are currently collaborating with experts from 12 countries of the world. Studying the global leaders’ expertise in this area, the Company’s specialists in metrology consistently extend relations with foreign firms. Development of metrological technologies within a company is quite a capital-intensive process, but Surgutneftegas’s top-managers realize the Company cannot do without it and put forth great efforts to make the oil and gas production processes meet the worldwide-adopted quality standards.

Press Service of OJSC “Surgutneftegas”