Public-private partnership opportunities should be used to strengthen innovative infrastructure - Rustem Khamitov

UFA, 24 May 2017. /Bashinform News Agency/. On May 24, at the Government House of the Republic, Rustem Khamitov held a meeting of the Council for Science under the Head of Bashkortostan, dedicated to the development of the regional petrochemical complex.

"Today in many countries it is the oil and gas chemistry that is becoming one of the fastest growing industries - especially in Europe, North America and China. And, we must admit that since the beginning of the 1990-s there has been a certain technological gap in oil and gas regions of Russia, a decrease in level of competencies, and as a result - of general competitiveness," the Head of the Republic stated. "The reasons for this are known - low innovation activity, insufficient investment in R & D, conservatism with respect to innovations, and sometimes even personal disinterest among the leadership of a number of companies. "

The Head of the Region noted that one of the largest oil and gas chemical complexes in the country was successfully developing in Bashkortostan, including such well-known companies as Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat, Polyef, Synthez-Kauchuk, Ufaorgsintez and several others. Back in 2012, a territorial petrochemical cluster was created that united a whole group of small clusters - small-tonnage petrochemicals, oil and gas engineering, construction and installation, oil and gas engineering, radio electronics, geophysics, including about 200 enterprises and organizations of our republic.

According to Rustem Khamitov, in recent years, new capacities for production of ethylbenzene, styrene, vinyl chloride, acrylic acid, polypropylene, ethylene-propylene rubber have been put into operation, along with growing demand for high-quality products of the Ishimbai specialized chemical plant. At the same time, there is still a backlog in development and implementation of new technologies for processing natural gas, despite a significant surplus of this raw material.

"The opportunities of public-private partnership should be used widely to strengthen the innovation infrastructure. We, as the authorities, as state structures, are ready to cooperate with large, medium-sized, small businesses on forming such enterprises, creating pilot facilities for testing and introduction of new technologies for production of demanded products of low-tonnage chemistry", said Rustem Khamitov. "It is important to create jointly scientific experimental facilities, including an educational and scientific-production oil and gas testing ground for developing technologies for extracting hard-to-recover oil reserves."