Gazprom, RUSNANO Continue Joint Studies of Composite Pipes Use

Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Anatoly Chubais, Chairman of the RUSNANO Executive Board held a regular joint meeting at Gazprom’s headquarters dedicated to creating innovative products and their use at Gazprom’s production facilities.

Taking part in the meeting were Members of the Gazprom Management Committee, heads of the relevant units and organizations of Gazprom and RUSNANO.

The meeting pointed out that the companies continued the joint studies of composite pipes use by Gazprom.

“It’s a high time to carry out a specific project for composite materials use at our trunklines. For this purpose we are going to choose a gas pipeline section to become a testing ground for determining the capabilities of a composite pipe,” said Alexey Miller.

Before June 2015 it is planned to conduct R&D activities aimed, inter alia, at setting the requirements for target performance indicators of composite pipes and their joints. After that, an experimental design work will be done on the basis of these requirements. It will be followed by the construction of the gas pipeline section specified by Gazprom.

Gazprom and RUSNANO’s portfolio companies are efficiently developing the cooperation in the area of cutting-edge energy saving technologies as well. For instance they provided a preliminary economic efficiency analysis of applying LED-based luminaries at Gazprom’s facilities. Application of Optogan’s LED-based luminaries at Gazprom Transgaz Yugorsk made it possible to reduce power consumption by lighting equipment by 34 per cent, providing higher efficiency of illumination. All in all, the total costs of LED-based luminaries installation, application and maintenance as compared to fluorescent lamps are more than 25 per cent lower, whereas the expected payback period is less than four years.

The meeting also looked into the issue of using anticorrosion nanocoating (created by METAKLEY from domestic raw materials) in domestic production of pipes for Gazprom. The coating, rivaling foreign counterparts, has undergone a testing procedure and was approved by Gazprom VNIIGAZ. The coating is currently under pilot operation and its commercial application technology is being worked out.

In addition, the parties discussed the preliminary results of testing TERMOINTECH thermoelectric generators at Gazprom’s facilities. The generators were noted to consume natural gas. Therefore, they could be used for power generation at out-of-grid Gazprom’s facilities. Gazprom and RUSNANO agreed to proceed with the generators’ testing.