MY SPECIALITY
I am a second-year student of the Oil and Gas Mining Department, one of the
largest and oldest at the university. The oil and gas industry is a vital component of
the national economy. The petroleum industry includes the global processes of
exploration, extraction, refining, transporting (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and
marketing petroleum products. The largest volume products of the industry are fuel
oil and gasoline (petrol). Petroleum (oil) is also the raw material for many chemical
products, including pharmaceuticals, solvents, fertilizers, pesticides, and plastics. The
industry is usually divided into three major components: upstream (геологоразведка
и добыча), midstream (переработка, хранение и транспортировка нефти) and
downstream (переработка нефти и сбыт нефтепродуктов). Midstream
operations are usually included in the downstream category.
Petroleum is vital to many industries, and is of importance to the maintenance
of industrial civilization in its current configuration, and thus is a critical concern for
many nations. Oil accounts for a large percentage of the world’s energy consumption,
ranging from as low of 32% for Europe and Asia, up to a high of 53% for the Middle
East.
We know that our oil and gas industry needs a great number of oil engineers. I
will be one of them in a few years.
After graduating, students of the Oil & Gas Mining department will be working
in the Polar Regions and Middle Asia, East and West Siberia or on offshore drilling
rigs in southern, northern or Far East seas.
The main chairs of the department are the following:
a). oil and gas wells drilling;
b). oil and gas field development and exploitation;
c). gas and gas-condensate field development and exploitation.
The students specializing in oil and gas wells drilling become drillers or mining
engineers. In the future work they will solve rather complicated but interesting
problems: to automatize the process of drilling, to drill deep wells faster at a
minimum cost, to improve the drilling technology and so on. The oil industry is
working on new ways to drill oil, including horizontal techniques, to reach oil under
ecologically-sensitive areas, and using lasers to drill oil wells.
Oil and gas field development consists in drilling of the field and lifting of oil
and gas to the surface. Oil fields are developed in accordance with special
development projects based on the natural conditions of the well. The students
specializing in oil field development and exploitation will deal with the recovery of
oil, repair of oil wells, improvement of secondary oil recovery and many other
problems.
The students specializing in the gas and gas-condensate field development and
exploitation are trained in all the problems of theory, technology and designing of gas
and gas-condensate field development. They study all the subjects connected with the
transportation and underground storage of gas.
With all of this oil-drilling technology in use, and new methods in
development, the question remains: Will we have enough oil to meet our needs?
Current estimates suggest that we have enough oil for about 63 to 95 years to come,
based on current and future finds and present demands.