OREANDA-NEWS. January 24, 2012. Sergey Kudryashev, RF Deputy Minister for Energy, and Rustam Minnekhanov, the president of the Republic of Tatarstan, visited OJSC TANECO on December 29.

It’s the second visit of Kudryashev to Refining and Petrochemical Complex in Nizhnekamsk in 2011. From the moment of the first visit in the early April several important events have occurred.

On 29 of November Russian Federation Ministry for Energy, by the instruction # 28-р dd. November 29, 2011 included OJSC TANECO to the list of operating companies of Russia. The status of Refinery was changed from “Under construction” to “Put into operation”.

License of Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Atomic Supervision (RF Rostekhnadzor) for the operation of fire and explosion hazardous facilities was obtained on December 2.

Sergey Kudryashev accompanied by Deputy Prime-Minister of Tatarstan – Minister for Energy of Tatarstan Republic Ilshat Fardiev, General Director of OAO Tataneft Shafagat Takhautdinov, General Director of OJSC TANECO Khamza Bagmanov visited key facilities of refinery and transport infrastructure of the Complex.

Then an extended meeting was hold where prospects of further implementation of Tatneft’s strategic project – TANECO complex and some other issues were discussed.

General Director of OJSC TANECO Khamza Bagmanov delivered a report on results of commissioning works, refinery’s quality and quantity values. He informed the audience that 2 million 80 thousand ton of oil has been processed by the moment. All the production meets the requirements of state standard. By now vacuum block of CDU/VDU-7, sour gas flare system, condensate purification block of chemical water treatment unit, deaeration unit, vacuum gasoil tank farm, fuel oil mixing and cooling package on visbreaker operating on vacuum residue from CDU/VDU-7 are brought to process mode. Starting operations are carried out on vacuum residue visbreaker. Action plan for SRU preparation and start-up was developed.

Nail Maganov, First Deputy General Director of OAO Tatneft - Head of Crude Oil and Petrochemical Sales Department, reported on configuration and estimated date of TANECO further stages start-up.

Issues related to oil production and transportation were also considered at the meeting.

Nail Ibragimov, Chief Engineer of OAO Tatneft and Rais Khusainov, Chief Geologist of the company, reported on these issues.

During the press conference hold after the meeting Sergey Kudryashev highly appreciated the role of TANECO in economics of the Russian Federation.

RF Deputy Minister for Energy has also noted great labour of all involved in the project implementation. In his opinion oil and gas industry of Tatarstan enters 2012 year with good prospects and well-grounded hopes

Rustam Minnekhanov told the journalists about the value of TANECO for further development of our republic. According to aims set by the Prime Minister of RF Vladimir Putin to double internal gross product, Tatarstan is required to bring gross regional product to two trillion rubles by 2015. This aim will not be possible to achieve without high-tech and large scale projects like TANECO. Start-up of the first stage of TANECO is the most important stage towards the oil deep conversion of 97% - emphasized the President.

A bit earlier during the meting, he highly appreciated the role of Tatneft company in the development of all branches of the republic’s economy.