The SPE Eastern Europe Subsurface Conference organized by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and initiated by Naftogaz brought together more than 420 top company managers and technicians from 17 countries in Kyiv to discuss these issues.

The Kyiv section expects to hold monthly technical meetings to discuss and find solutions to current problems in Ukraine's oil and gas industry. It comes to, in particular, an increase of the efficiency of exploration through the use of new technologies such as digitalization and machine learning, optimization of production by improving geological and technical measures and accelerating the development of fields. To this end, it is planned to use new approaches, such as horizontal drilling, multi-stage fracturing, etc. The next meeting of the Kyiv section of the SPE will take place in early December, Sanzhar Zharkeshov, head of the Kyiv professional section of the SPE and deputy director of the Naftogaz Exploration and Production Division, said.

Thanks to cooperation with the international SPE community, our specialists and the industry as a whole will have the opportunity to involve international experience and practices used in other countries. It will also help prepare current students to work as technical experts in the oil and gas industry, attract investment and increase competition among service companies. The Kyiv section will also be a platform for testing new ideas and solving technical dilemmas.

Naftogaz launched new large-scale production projects with a capacity of 600 bcm of gas reserves. The success of their implementation depends, first of all, on the involvement of professional expertise. That is why Naftogaz is strengthening cooperation with the international SPE community. The first step was the opening of the Kyiv section of the SPE in October for specialists working in energy companies.

Within 2 strategic panels and 10 professional sections of the SPE Eastern Europe Subsurface Conference, the participants discussed current challenges of gas production in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region.

Mavrikiy Kalugin, a member of the Board of Naftogaz, explained in his speech why SPE is the flagship of international professional expertise and why the experience of the union members is useful for domestic cases:
"The SPE community is a unique knowledge base that accumulates many years of experience from professionals around the world. I have been a member of the community since 1997, and over the years I had the opportunity to see the usefulness of the information that the SPE offers to its members.

When I started my career at an oil and gas company in Alaska, I lacked the practical experience of the latest production technologies at the time. The first thing my more experienced colleagues advised me was to use the SPE resource. I could download articles on any topic to find solutions to the problems I encountered. More than 20 years have passed since then and today SPE is doing much more to promote latest technologies and research in the field.

For oil and gas companies, this is a source of ideas and solutions for current production cases. For young professionals, this is an opportunity to make true their ambitions and be on the same wave with experienced professionals. I remember my first speech as a young expert at the SPE conference in Houston, USA, where artificial production was discussed. It was an invaluable experience."

Investments, technologies and expertise are important for stabilizing and increasing Ukrainian gas production.

During his speech in the panel on expanding the investment opportunities of Eastern Europe, Oleksandr Romaniuk, Director of the Exploration and Production Division, drew attention to the problem of depletion of conventional fields and told about plans to increase the efficiency of their development.

– At the time of Ukraine's independence, only two new open deposits with really large hydrocarbon reserves are mentioned - Kobzivske and Yuliivske. Most of the company's other major assets were discovered more than 30 years ago. Today they have an extremely high level of depletion. In order to effectively manage such assets, last year we launched a pilot project in the format of PEC – production enhance contract. Our partner in this project is Expert Petroleum. We already observe a positive result of such cooperation, primarily due to the rapid decision-making and efficient implementation of production plans. This is what will stabilize production. At the same time, we raise investments from international partners in new strategic projects to increase reserves and production.

Given the case, according to Oleksandr Romaniuk, Naftogaz plans to scale the PEC project. Work is already underway to prepare for the announcement of tender for 20 depleted deposits. This will free up resources and increase Naftogaz's focus on increasing strategic asset reserves - the Black Sea, new PSA areas and the Carpathian region. This will also accelerate the program of intensification in the existing depleted areas by involving new solutions and technologies.

According to Naftogaz of Ukraine