Empress Catherine II Saint Petersburg Mining University continues to strengthen its partnerships with Chinese universities. The first stop of its delegation’s visit to the People’s Republic of China was the city of Qingdao. The working group, headed by Vice-Rector for Special Programs Marat Rudakov, met with the leadership of China University of Petroleum (UPC).
During the September visit of the President of the Russian Federation to China, Moscow and Beijing agreed to hold “Cross Years of Education” in 2026–2027. This initiative is aimed at the strategic development of cooperation in science and education, which is considered one of the priority areas within the entire framework of the Russian-Chinese comprehensive partnership.
The China University of Petroleum (UPC) holds a leading position among China’s top technical universities, specializing in petroleum engineering, mechanical engineering, as well as engineering and natural sciences.
The university is located in Shandong Province, which is home to extensive oil fields (for example, the “Victory Field,” the second largest in the country). The province accounts for 26% of China’s oil refining capacity, and its economy ranks third in size with a GDP of 1.3 trillion USD.
The specifics of the region largely determine the university’s focus. Almost 30,000 students study across its 16 faculties. The institution also includes 80 research laboratories — in deep petroleum geology and physical geography, heavy oil, reservoir geology, and the development of unconventional fields.
The guests were given a detailed introduction to the university’s infrastructure and the scientific fields pursued by their colleagues. In particular, the delegation from Saint Petersburg visited the teaching and laboratory complex, where students and postgraduates study, as well as separate research centers, where scientific staff conduct their work.
«Why do we speak today about the special importance of our cooperation with the China University of Petroleum? Both the St. Petersburg and Qingdao universities have similar areas of development in both education and science. For example, they offer a number of six-year engineering programs that include extended industrial internships. Upon graduation, the student receives a master’s degree in engineering. It is precisely this kind of model of higher technical education that the Mining University is now implementing in Russia.
There are also many closely related areas of scientific research in the oil and gas sector. Take, for instance, deep drilling technologies. Our Chinese colleagues have created a dedicated laboratory for this field, where they refine their developments and drill pilot wells up to 200 meters deep directly on the campus. At our university, this takes place at the ‘Sablino’ training site. Moreover, the Mining University has also begun drilling an ultra-deep well in the Timan-Pechora petroleum province in the Komi Republic, with a projected depth of 8,000 meters», – noted Marat Rudakov.
Staff from the China University of Petroleum took part in creating two of China’s deepest wells — “A1H” in the Pearl River estuary and “Shenjitake-1” in the Tarim Basin, for which they carried out logging and geophysical studies.
In June 2025, a working group from the Chinese university, headed by Vice President Dai Caili, visited Saint Petersburg Mining University. During the meeting, both parties confirmed their mutual interest in academic exchange, joint publications, and collaborative research in the fields of geochemistry, drilling, enhanced oil recovery, and raw material processing. The guest placed particular emphasis on the proposal for a joint project in deep metadrilling, expressing her confidence that “the cooperation of our universities’ working teams in this field will be in great demand and of great importance for both countries”.
