Gazprom-AR2014

Innovations
85
Gazprom’s leadership in the global energy market is in many respects driven by innovative
technologies and equipment widely used by the Company. The Company takes full
advantage of its existing R&D capabilities and heavily invests in supporting own R&D
projects and technological advancement.
In the modern world, sustainable development and sustained business success are driven
by a company’s ability to innovate. Therefore, innovations are an essential element of Gazprom’s
corporate culture.
The Group is one of the world’s largest energy suppliers, and its current achievements are
largely due to a wide use of technological advances at all stages of its growth.
By introducing new and unique hydrocarbon production and delivery projects in polar regions,
on the shelf of the Okhotsk Sea, in Eastern Siberia and in the Far East, strategically important for
the Russian economy, the Company drives new innovative and advanced solutions while maintaining
its position of the country’s largest consumer of innovative products.
The Company’s long-term innovations planning and management are regulated by the
OAO Gazprom’s Innovative Development Programme until 2020, approved in June 2011. The Programme
sets forth and streamlines priority objectives and focus areas covering all aspects of the
innovation cycle and sets innovative growth targets for the planning period.
Spanning a ten-year period, the Programme covers gas, oil and power generation businesses
and provides for a range of interrelated initiatives to design and introduce new technologies
and innovative world-class products and services. The Programme also aims at providing a favourable
environment to promote innovative efforts both at OAO Gazprom and in related industrial
production sectors of Russia. The Programme is the key tool in advancing the Company’s
technology level and supporting its positions of a technology leader in the global energy business.
The Company’s innovative development priorities include:
— prospecting and development technologies, including developing resources in permafrost
areas and on the continental shelf;
— production technologies for operating fields, including at their final development stage;
— technologies enhancing the efficiency of gas trunk pipelines and storage facilities;
— gas marketing and use technologies; and
— gas processing and gas and petrochemistry technologies.
OAO Gazprom’s R&D Awards
Established in 1998, OAO Gazprom’s R&D Awards promote technological advancement. Projects
nominated for the award are reviewed by a panel composed of experts from OAO Gazprom and
its subsidiaries, who evaluate the proposed solution’s relevance, novelty, knowledge-intensity,
and cost efficiency for Gazprom, as well its marketability potential, and the extent to which local
materials, technologies and equipment are used.
In 2014, projects nominated by OOO Gazprom VNIIGAZ and OOO Gazprom transgaz
Yekaterinburg were noted for their high relevancy and practical implications.
OOO Gazprom VNIIGAZ has put in place a system to evaluate performance of circumferential
welds in trunk lines based on a unique and unified hierarchy of simulation models and structural
strength assessment criteria.
By applying the resulting solutions to the construction of its offshore gas pipelines
OAO Gazprom was able to keep up with the required construction rates and minimise unnecessary
repairs while fully meeting weld strength and reliability requirements.
OOO Gazprom transgaz Yekaterinburg designed a technology and unique process equipment
for low-tonnage LNG production and storage.
Yekaterinburg’s GDS-4 gas distribution station commissioned a 3 t/h LNG production facility.
The company set up mobile and stationary filling stations for gas motor fuel consumers, i.e.
motor vehicles and gas turbine locomotives.
OAO Gazprom Annual Report 2014