Original Solution Wins Youth Russian Petroleum & Gas Challenge

This year, the Youth Russian Petroleum & Gas Challenge was held for the first time during the Russian Petroleum and Gas Congress during MIOGE oil and gas exhibition. The event gives gifted youth the chance to demonstrate their management abilities to potential employers and add to their knowledge base while working on their case projects as part of the competition. This year, 900 students from 46 Russian cities participated. The students were divided into teams and challenged to draft a development plan through 2020 for IntroVision, which offers solutions for studying oil fields with tight resources.

According to analysts, the biggest growth in the sector today is seen in tight oil and so teams' attention was directed to this area. One prospective area, in the opinion of the young engineers at the contest, is shale oil production and the development of the Bazhenov shale deposit. However, the drilling of new wells will continue to decline, and so counting on that emphasis is not a good idea, the girls on Orange Dream team said, referring to analysts' data. They said that there are new technologies today which can aid in the extraction of large volumes of resources without drilling new wells.

The contest jury included experts from the Russian consulting company Strategy Partners Group; LUKOIL, Russia's largest private oil company; and the oil services company Molten. The professionals gave the students sound recommendations that will help them further their careers. The most convincing project was presented by the team "48 Hours" (Timofey Gubatenko, Igor Makarevich, Vadim Meshcheryakov and Vadim Otto), which won first place.

All of the teams gave very good presentations, and presented a lot of interesting ideas and approached. It was expected that the winning team would propose original solutions which could increase the effectiveness of the start-up. There was demand for a deep understanding of the market, good analysis and a readiness to react to challenges. The winning team suggested an original idea on expertise of oil reserves and found a new area for the application of analysis used in oil and gas technologies", Svetlana Dianova, one of the judges and the deputy director of oil and gas practices at Molten. She noted that the overall high level of preparation for the contest, was impressive and added that it was nice to see the ability to think, draw logical conclusions and answer questions. "All of them offer great hope, and it is nice to see intelligent, thinking young specialists who are thirsty for knowledge", Dianova said.

IntroVision invited the teams which finished in the top three to present their projects to the company's board of directors to put their ideas into practice. Some participants were even given offers to train directly with companies in the industry.

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