This year’s SPE Student Chapter Leoben Field Trip brought 15 students, enrolled in both the undergraduate (B.Sc.) and graduate (M.Sc. and Ph.D.) programs to Russia. The goal of the trip was to get to know how students live and study in two of the most famous Russian Petroleum Universities, namely Moscow’s Gubkin University and the Ufa State Petroleum Technological University.
The first destination of our multinational group was the Russian capital, Moscow. Welcomed and guided by our colleagues of Gubkin University’s SPE Student Chapter, our students got not only the opportunity of visiting some of Moscow’s most famous sights, such as the Red Square, the famous Moscow Kremlin and the Cosmonautics Museum, but also the Russian State Petroleum University (РГУ нефти и газа им. И.М.Губкниа) and BakerHughes’ Russian Headquarters.
We got to meet university officials, who told us about the great opportunities for students and graduates of Gubkin University and showing us the high level of hands-on industry practice on state-of-the-art laboratory and training equipment. Finally, we had the opportunity to meet managers of BakerHughes who told us about their operations in the Russian and Caspian Sea Region, which was certainly a new and interesting aspect for our group.
Furthermore – and this was certainly one of the highlights of our trip – our stay in Moscow was coinciding with the visit of SPE International President D. Nathan Meehan, who held a presentation for the Student Chapters at the Moscow universities to which we were also invited. After that, we also took the obligatory “SPElfies” with our Russian Friends and SPE-President Meehan.
After our five-days stay in Mocow, our group travelled further East to Ufa, where we could get a first impression of the famous Russian winter – heavy snowfalls and temperatures below 0°expected us upon our arrival in Ufa. Despite the cold weather we got a very warm welcome from Ufa’s SPE Student Chapter.
As in Moscow, we got the opportunity to meet with university officials and the local SPE Chapter who introduced us to their profTELEPORT project, which is a project that should guide students into their future professional work. The mutual friendship was strengthened by games encouraging out-of-the-box thinking, team building and team work.
After a tour through the university, Prof. Mastobaev of the Chair of Petroleum Transport and Storage invited us to a Q&A session about the university and the opportunities of a semester abroad.
Furthermore, our colleagues of the Ufa SPE Student Chapter organized for us an excursion to Burintekh, an Ufa based company specialized in the production of drilling and workover tools. We had the great opportunity to visit one of their factories, where Burintekh produces – among other products – roller cone and PDC drill bits. Our tour followed the manufacturing process from the raw material via the individual manufacturing and treatment steps down to quality control and quality assurance in the dedicated material science labs.
This year was a very important year for the Ufa SPE Student Chapter, as it was not only their tenth anniversary, but the student chapter has also been rewarded for their hard work over the past year with the “Outstanding Student Chapter Award”, which is a very highly respected decoration for every student chapter. These two great achievements have been celebrated on a large party in a Jazz Club in the city center of Ufa, to which we were also invited. Along with dancing and karaoke performed by the students, we got our last chance of talking to our Russian colleagues, as this party also marked the end of our stay in Russia.
On a little side note, we would like to mention that a close cooperation exists between Ufa State Petroleum Technology University and Montanuniversitaet Leoben, which makes student exchanges very simple. Currently, we have some students from Ufa in Leoben, and there are a few students from our university planning on doing a semester abroad in Ufa. After having seen this university, we would really like to encourage all of our students to consider such a great opportunity, as it can offer much more than only studying abroad, but also getting to know new people, broaden your mind and get an unforgettable experience in a foreign country! We are also doing our best to get a similar cooperation between our university and Moscow’s Gubkin University.
This Field Trip helped bonding and tightening the Austro-Russian friendship, both between the students and the Student Chapters. We are looking forward to many more international events and cooperations to come with our new friends, be it mutual visits, exchange programs or other joint events.
On this occasion, the SPE Student Chapter Leoben would like to thank our colleagues at Gubkin University and Ufa University for their hospitality, their kindness and their incredible help organizing all the amazing events we experienced in this week. Without you, this whole Field Trip would not have been the same, it would not even have been possible!