The Empress Catherine II St. Petersburg Mining University has started summer internships. The 2024 season is unique in its own way. For the first time, oil and gas students have the opportunity to gain full-fledged production skills in the field of exploration, development and production of hydrocarbons in the Leningrad Region.
Traditionally, future specialists of the mineral resource complex (MRC) were sent to gain work experience at the largest enterprises of the country - in Siberia, the Far East and the Far North. At the bases of the university they underwent training and simulator practice - as part of a group under the guidance of a mentor they got acquainted with the equipment and technological processes relevant to their specialty. Since this year, the full-scale modernization of the university's own Sablino Training and Research Site has made it possible to bring the site conditions as close as possible to real production.
"It is advisable for all students of the Mining University without exception to undergo practical training on the basis of the polygon. They study at the university aimed at the development of the MSC, and at the polygon they can see what the complex is and how to work with it, what the subsoil is and how the process of development and extraction of minerals is carried out. A number of faculties can still pass in "Sablino" only familiarization and training practices, oilmen and geological prospectors are already practicing all possible tasks up to obtaining a working profession, practical skills and experience. Their adaptation to the future at work is universal and fleeting," said Dmitry Tananykhin, Dean of the Oil and Gas Faculty.
An impressive part of the interested parties are foreign students, who very rarely get admission to industrial practice from the resource companies for a number of reasons - difficulties with health and life insurance, data secrecy and the employer's understanding of the fact that this way of selecting and educating young personnel in advance will not give the desired result.
"Sablino" allows to get industrial experience in an extensive list of working professions, among which the main ones are "Drill rig operator", "Driller's assistant", "Collector laboratory technician", "Oil and gas production operator" and "Logging assistant".
The equipment is divided into two main units. As for exploration, development and production of hydrocarbons, it is, for example, a drilling rig MBU-125 used for rotary and downhole motor drilling of production and exploration wells up to 2700 m deep, a hydraulic wrench GKSh-4000M for fast, safe hydraulic wrench GKSh-4000M for fast, safe, accurate screwing and unscrewing of drill and casing pipes with outer diameter from 102 to 340 mm, rocking machine, lifting unit UPA 60/80 designed for current repair, development and overhaul of oil wells, deep well pump for mechanized oil production.
The second block is geological exploration drilling, both for the surface layer of the earth and for large horizons. These are such rigs as a drilling complex for drilling wells by the core transport method - KGK-100 and a drilling rig with static and dynamic sensing devices - URB-2D3.
With all the diversity of the technical park of the Training and Research Polygon, its uniqueness lies not only in the richness of the choice of technological machines and installations.
"Especially for Sablino, the Mining University was the first in Russia to obtain a license for subsoil use within the framework of a training and research site. Until then, according to the Subsoil Law, subsoil use licenses were issued "for exploration and production of minerals" or "for geological study of subsoil, exploration and production of minerals". But never before such a document was received by the university for its polygon. We did not fall under any article of the law, that's why we spent 2 whole years to get the opportunity to use the subsoil plot for educational and research purposes", - emphasized Nikolay Rudnitsky, Director of the Educational and Scientific Polygon in "Sablino".
"There are no oil and gas fields near St. Petersburg, so one of the priority tasks was to create full-fledged wells simulating real fields, in which cementing is done and strings are run. Naturally, equipment of such level can and should work for testing and certification of new technologies, and not only created by the scientific team of our university, but also by manufacturers. Already today there are requests from third-party companies, moreover, together with PJSC "Gazprom Neft" three tests have been successfully conducted. The logistics of new equipment to Western Siberia and back is too labor-intensive. It is much more convenient and logical when the well is located near the center of technology creation. That is why the polygon is called a training and research site," said Dmitry Tananykhin.
To date, two wells have been drilled. Trainees are involved in the creation of the third one, and this is a really important experience for any future oilman.
Organization of production practices in "Sablino" allows to guarantee that the student after mastering the theoretical part will get all the necessary skills provided by the program. He has a clear work plan, which will be 100% worked out. The university has no opportunity to control the whole process thoroughly when sending them to the enterprise.
"We are now running steel drill pipes down to a depth of about 315 m to normalize the bottom hole and flush out the reagent residue after cementation. I have only had training internships before, so I highly doubt that I would be allowed to do this kind of work in real production conditions. Here both teachers and employees of the polygon are primarily focused on our training, while in production the main thing is the working process. There nobody repeats, does not explain, does not spend extra time for each student to participate in this or that process. You don't get such an attitude in large companies," says Ivan Kadysysev, a third-year student.
The trainees are divided into teams, which, under the guidance of their mentors, perform technological operations in accordance with the received tasks. During the internship they will have to pass 4 positions, each of which corresponds to its own profile, technique and set of actions to be mastered. For each of them 4 days are allocated.
All mentors are final year students, and during 2024 they have been working in the staff of the Training and Research Site. Thus, Denis Rybakov was selected and additionally trained to work with any technical unit of the polygon. He participated in drilling the first well and today is ready to help students gain relevant experience.
“The infrastructure allows me to mix business with pleasure - to practice and master some complex experiments. In particular, I teach the guys how to operate the URB-2D3 drilling rig and the NB50 pump, used in geological exploration. I devote my free time to field testing my own designs of a circulation converter with a converter drive. When drilling, part of the solution is usually kept in porous formations to prevent the use of PBL subs.However, they can be used only a limited number of times, and they work worse when the well deviates from the vertical. I have improved the activation mechanism, which allows the device to be used an unlimited number of times and reduces non-productive time for the drilling crew. Now on the basis of the same URB-2D3 rig I am testing a circulation unit simulating the absorption of washing fluid by rocks. Such full-scale tests are necessary in order to proceed to pilot tests, conclude R&D and implement the development in production," says Denis Rybakov.
Today "Sablino" is not only the most modern equipment and special machinery. It is a huge complex on the territory of 14 hectares, including an industrial site for exploration, development and production of hydrocarbons, administrative and production building with computer classes and simulators-simulators of operation and development of wells. At present, the Laboratory Complex is at the final stage of construction, which will house a core storage facility and specialized laboratories for the study of oil and core. In the future there will also be an Experimental Resource Processing Shop, a Test Module of Antarctic Drilling Technologies, and an Active Energy Complex with renewable energy sources.
In addition to educational and production practices for representatives of St. Petersburg Mining University, Sablino provides training for undergraduate and graduate students of Russian and foreign partner universities. For example, already in early July an Iranian delegation from Shiraz University will start scientific work at the Training and Research Site.
Moreover, a cycle of additional professional competencies is being organized on the basis of the site, within the framework of which the university can promptly respond to any innovations in the industry and provide this knowledge in the form of short-term educational courses on a wide range of topics. In the very near future, there will be launched here courses for such training areas as electric power engineering, mechanical engineering and production automation. Most of the existing Russian-made plants operate on electric motors and are automated, which means that they need to be improved and repaired, as well as to develop the power supply system and process automation.
The Mining University has a network of training bases across the country: in the Novgorod region and in the Crimea, Kavgolovo, Kuzmolovo and Mayak in the Leningrad region. All of them are aimed at the fulfillment of the actual task, the most important one for Russian higher education at the present time - elimination of the deficit of competent engineering personnel.
