Participants in Atyrau Energy Challenge may develop projects in APEC free of charge

Competition participants, who do not have conditions for work, may use premises of APEC PetroTechnic international college and continue to prepare for digitizer contest, – event planners of Atyrau Energy Challenge – the first oil and gas hackathon – advised at press-conference in Atyrau-Akparat press-club.

Co-working space was launched in the educational institution for all participants of Atyrau Energy Challenge. Developers will receive access to consultations by oil and gas industry specialists, who are instructors of APEC PetroTechnic, special conditions in the local coffee room and other conveniences necessary for comfortable work. Hackathon participants are already using these premises.

Atyrau HUB founded under the auspices of APEC PetroTechnic will become the magnet for IT-specialists of the region as well as the place for development of IT and startup ecosystem in Atyrau region. Founders of Atyrau HUB are sure that particularly here the new solutions may be found, which may be spread throughout the whole oil and gas industry in the future and which will possibly enable gradual digitization of the whole oil and gas industry.

“We want to become an anchor, the place for gathering and development of talented IT specialists of the region. As of today we see that such specialists have to leave for Nur-Sultan or Almaty, because they do not see an opportunity of developing their gifts here. Our task is to provide equal and fair possibilities for development of all talented digitizers”, – said Raushan Naizabayeva – event planner of Atyrau Energy Challenge.

Atyrau Energy Challenge is a marathon of programmers, developers, web-masters, which stimulates forthcoming and development of new ideas fostering facilitiation of operational processes in oil and gas industry. Goals of Atyrau Energy Challenge:

– Find and help to implement the most promising solutions for oil and gas industry of Kazakhstan;

– Development of local content and digital startup-ecosystem in Atyrau;

– Attract scientific communities and startups from neighboring countries;

– Attract promising startups, accelerators and investors into oil and gas industry.

“Taking into consideration priority areas of “Digital Kazakhstan” State program the decision was taken to open new fields of specialization. “Information systems”, which studies extended field of knowledge and scientific areas – software engineering, artificial intellect, automation of scientific research, web-technologies, computing mathematics, architectures of computer systems. Also “Automation and management”: here the graduates’ professional field of activity will be the area of automation, information technology development and management in technical systems related to application of means and methods of information processing with the purpose of management in all production areas”, – said Victoria Yudina – deputy director of APEC PetroTechnic.

Training of specialists will aim as well at their future activity in oil and gas companies. We hope that they will be able to develop necessary technologies for productions, innovative thinking as well as we will grow a generation of digitizers, who will understand the business and know production processes of production, transportation and processing (refining).

The first Atyrau Energy Challenge was arranged by the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) jointly with Petrocouncil.kz (with “Atameken” national chamber of entrepreneurs of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Kazenergy association), jointly with APEC PetroTechnic Higher college with support from Republic of Kazakhstan Ministry of energy, Ministry of digital development, innovations and aerospace industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan, of Atyrau region mayor’s administration and Astana Hub. The contest among programmers invites participants from all over Kazakhstan to search for solution of such problems as:

  • ensuring compliance with safety and environmental protection rules
  • facilitation of stockpiling and storage of materials
  • reduction of paper document flow
  • solutions for industrial Internet of things

More detailed description of problems articulated by Tengizchevroil, NCOC, Norsec, Sitek Caspian, Ayacom as well as technical tasks and rules for participation have been published on the website http://atyrauhub.kz/ru/index.php. The result of problem solution will be finished products, which are functionally operative to the maximum and are launched in test mode. Participants older than 16 years with work experience of more than 3 months in oil and gas industry are admitted to participation in Atyrau Energy Challenge. With the purpose of considering and selecting of requests arrived from participants the event planner is creating an expert council, which consists of TCO, KMG, NCOC and KPO employees as well as involved industry experts from other companies.

The mission of Atyrau Energy Challenge is stimulation of scientific and innovation research, commercialization and scaling thereof as well as development of Kazakhstan local content in oil and gas projects of the country. One of the main tasks is creation of digital ecosystem for oil and gas industry. Organization of partnership interaction between oil and gas companies, scientific community and startups.

One of drivers for creation of Atyrau Hub is the society of petroleum engineers – non-commercial professional organization of technical specialists in petroleum industry. The basic purpose of the society is accumulation and distribution of knowledge in the field of oil exploration and production as well as development of accompanying technologies. More than 168 thousands of persons from 144 countries are members of SPE.