On the 31 of May 2006 in Murmansk there took place the first international seminar "Association of Suppliers of Oil and Gas Industry "Murmanshelf" — new possibilities for the development of the enterprises in Murmansk Region.

This association has recently been founded by the Department of Industry and Transportation of Murmansk Region, regional Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (Employers) and Northern Chamber of Business and Industry in the framework of the implementation of Memorandum of Mutual Understanding in Technical and Economic Cooperation between Murmansk Region Government and the Norwegian oil and gas producing company "Statoil".

The main aim of the association is wide involvement of regional enterprises as of suppliers of production and services in projects on development of Stockman field and other mineral deposits of the Arctic shelf field, building of coastal complex, production and shipment of liquid natural gas, as well as other large objects on the Kola Peninsula. Possessing a powerful resource support base and the opportunity of involving experiences international experts and consultants, "Murmanshelf will provide assistance to regional enterprises in improvement of their competence as of suppliers for the yet new for our region field of industry.

It is not by chance that while presenting the new organization to the participants, director general of the association Mr. Grigory Stratiy emphasized that it would have been a mistake just to sit and wait that the orders will flow to Murmansk enterprises by themselves only due to their geographical location. Are they ready to offer competitive goods and services in the nearest years? The "Murmanshelf association is intended to help its countrymen to acquire the experience of business cooperation in this sphere. Grigory Ivanovich as a member of a working group participated in several meetings with Norwegian colleagues, visited a plant under construction in Hammerfest where representatives from Murmansk could visually evaluate the volume of works which are to be done even in a larger scale when constructing a coastal gas industry complex in Vidyaevo settlement.

Our neighbors have a similar association — "PetroArctic" — it has been created with the assistance of "Statoil" trust five years before the beginning of "Snohvit" project implementation and managed to sufficiently prepare local industry to participation in the works. It is not a secret that Norway started to develop the Arctic shelf much earlier than we and could worthy overcome many problems which we will have to face. In particular, in Hammerfest, for example, in its time there were not enough specialists among the local population of necessary for the development of "Snow-white" project description and the major part of high-paid working places have been taken by specialists from other regions of the country.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the experience of neighbors is invaluable for us. In accordance with Mr. Grigory Stratiy, Hammerfest itself and its districts have changed drastically House building and civil engineering has recovered, highways have been upgraded and new ones have been built, human services received additional development. Local enterprises involved into project implementations could increase the volume of output and the number of working places. "PetroArktik" association together with the interested enterprises has developed the staff training programme in necessary trades.

Aconfirmation to all the above said has been received by seminar participants at first hand there and then. The working experiences of implementation of "Sn0hvit" project have been presented by the member of the director board of "PetroArktik" association, managing director of the "Noveko" company Mr. Hans Peter Olsen and the sales manager of "Dalseide and Fl0ysand Group AS" Mr. Torbjorn Petersen. Not less interesting was the presentation of the vice president of "Aker Kvaerner Engineering and Technology Company" Mr. Erik Guldbrandsen about the experiences of international companies of involvement of Russian enterprises as suppliers for oil and gas projects. Torkild Reinertsen described the joint work with oil and gas suppliers in Murmansk Region.

The vice president of oil and gas producing company "Statoil" Mr. Henrik Karlsen shared his experience of work with regional suppliers of this world-wide known company. He emphasized that if the "Snohvif project gave a new impulse in the development of oil and gas resources on the shelf of northern seas, then the development of Stockman will become the logical continuation of this work and will contribute to the development of all Russian North, which our Norwegian colleagues are also interested in. The General Consul of the Kingdom of Norway in Murmansk Mr. Rune Asheim has mentioned with satisfaction that the industrial partnership of our countries is developing every day. This is especially evident in oil and gas industry. Creation of the "Murmanshelf association is another important step on the way of further development of cooperation in this fields.

The potential of our region for this has bee described by the first deputy head of the Department of Economic Development of Murmansk Region Mr. Sergey Semyonov: he described the prospect of the participation of regional enterprises in the development of oil and gas resources in the Barents region.

In the year 2005 the output of industrial production by the regional enterprises achieved more than 100 milliard rubles. In the industrial structure the maximum share is with the mining complex, power engineering and fish filed. The latter includes the dockyards that have the positive cooperation experience with Norwegian companies. First of all we speak of Murmansk Dockyard — SDP, which last year opened on its territory a joint enterprise on production of hardware for oil and gas field.

Together with other infrastructures a significant role in the economics of the region is played by transport. Murmansk transportation junction has already gained competitive ability. For example, there is no other European port in Russia which is able to receive vessels of over 200 thousand tons displacement. Here they have put into operation new cargo terminals, including for transshipping of almost 20 million tons of oil per year.

The regional government have approved of the strategy of the development of construction complex (which is still evidently behind the needs) till the year 2015, which will allow to have long-term development prospects and provide by that time the increase of the volume of contractual works by 2.8 times in comparison with the year 2006. On the whole the Murmansk region, as the reporter mentioned, has significant potential for supplying the goods, works and services for oil and gas field.

A more careful evaluation was given by Professor Fyodor Larichkin, director of the Institute of Economical Problems of Kola Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Sciences. He called upon to pay attention not only to the economic problems, but to the social ones as well. According the data presented by him, during the last years there is a clear tendency of the slowdown of the pace of economic growth of the region and besides the absolute value of international investments for the scale of the region is quite small. The migration outflow of population because of the setback in production, low income level and social security of the population has a negative effect on the prospects of further development. The appearance of the most high-paid in the country category of employees in the oil and gas field can lead to a greater differentiation of income between different layers of regional population. In order to avoid the mistakes, it is necessary to utilize the Norwegian experience in solving of such problems as well. This is why the creation of the "Murmanshelf association for the implementation of the projects on the development of Stockman and other arctic fields can be seen as an initial phase of build-up of regional industrial union of enterprises, able to improve the competitive advantages of Murmansk region.

As was confirmed by the acting head of Department of Industry and Transport of Murmansk Region Mr. Sergey Leus in his speech, actually this was the main aim of the creation of a new non-profit organization, which is the Association of Suppliers of Oil and Gas Industry "Murmanshelf. The possibility for local enterprises to take part in the development of fields on the shelf of northern seas largely depends on their timely reorientation to servicing the oil and gas field. Having become the member of the association, the enterprises will be able to expand the markets for their products and open new productions. Creation of such an infrastructure in the region will help to increase the level of there industrial branches as well and to activate the development of small and medium-scale enterprises and contribute to effective putting into practice of all the above mentioned projects.

It seems that the words of the seminar speakers were so convincing that only during the seminar a number of managers applied for the membership in the association. The entry is open to everyone, who values the well-being and economical prosperity of our region.

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The Industrial NORTH #1