24 / 32
I N N O V AT I O N S • V O L . V I I I , N O. 1 • 2 0 1 6
22
A S T H E WO R L D ’ S G AT H E R I N G L I N E S G E T O L D E R ,
I N D U S T R Y E X P E R T S S E A R C H F O R S O L U T I O N S
The story of Nefteyugansk, Russia, is a classic boomtown
narrative: A highly prized resource was discovered in a remote, sparsely-
populated location, and, nearly overnight, a city sprung up – mainly
to provide permanent accommodations for the sudden influx of
workers and business owners. In the case of Nefteyugansk, the resource
was oil, and the discovery happened in the early 1960s in a patch
of forest located in oil-rich Siberia. Since it was officially founded
in 1967, the city’s economy has been almost entirely centered on the
oil and gas industry. This fact is reflected in its name, which bears a
striking similarity to “Yuganskneftegaz” the name of the oil company
headquartered there (the Russian word
neft
translates to “oil” or
“petroleum”;
gaz
translates, unsurprisingly, to “gas”).
Until this year, there wasn’t anything particularly distinctive about
Nefteyugansk. It’s certainly not the only oil boomtown in Siberia’s
Khanty-Mansiysk region, which is home to around half of all the oil
currently produced in Russia. But on June 23, 2015, the town was
• Transmission vs.
Gathering: Same
Industry, Worlds Apart
• “A Finite Life”
• The Future of Gathering
Line Integrity