Transneft raises share of domestic equipment to 97.7%, aims for full import substitution by 2027

MOSCOW. July 30 (Interfax) - The share of domestic equipment used at Transneft is 97.7%, the Russian oil pipeline monopoly's president, Nikolai Tokarev said at a meeting with United Russia MPs, the company's in-house magazine Pipeline Oil Transport reported.

He said complete import substitution in the oil industry should be achieved by 2027. "The company is continuing to work in the area of developing its own production, automation and digitalization of operations," the magazine said.

Transneft began working on import substitution long before the imposition of sanctions, Tokarev said. "A program of 26 points for the most critical types of equipment that was previously bought abroad was compiled in 2014, including mainline pumps and engines for them. Twenty-five billion rubles were allocated to carry out the program. It is now fully completed," he said.

He also said one of Transneft's top-priority projects has been to quickly solve problems that have arisen due to sanctions.

"After European countries' refusal of Russian oil, the company managed to quickly redistribute transport volumes without losses for production volumes. The capacity of the Primorsk port was expanded by 10 million tonnes one year earlier than planned; the Kozmino port with design capacity of 30 million tonnes offloaded 45 million tonnes of oil in 2024; an investment project will conclude this year to expand the capacity of the Novorossiysk port by 15 million tonnes; and a railway transfer station with capacity of 7 million tonnes was put back into operation in Irkutsk Region," Tokarev said.

"The second issue is the replacement of the linear part of oil pipelines, the service life of which is more than 50 years. Out of almost 35,000 km, 10,000 km are left, so we need to annually replace 700-800 km of pipe," he said.

"There are fundamental things that we've been working on for years, including the law on pipeline transport, which has not budged for 11 years already. There is also a problem with protected zones and minimum distances near trunk pipelines," Tokarev said.