Company Evolution as a Success Story
The inception of Quantor Engineering Company dates back to July 17, 1997. The Company was initially founded as a service provider in the oil and gas production and refining and petrochemical industry operating within the Russian Federation and the Republic of Kazakhstan.
One of the Company’s top and long-term customers has historically been the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a company implementing a large-scale investment project, involving Russia, Kazakhstan, and national as well as registered companies, on oil transportation from suppliers in Tengiz and Atyrau, Astrakhan and Kropotkin up to tanker loading at the Novorossiysk Marine Terminal.
1999 to 2002, Quantor Engineering Company commissioned and carried out certification of the equipment used at the Tengiz-Novorossiysk export pipeline oil and gas custody transfer stations, i.e. at Astrakhan PS (pumping station), Komsomolskays PS, Kropotkin PS, and Novorossiysk Marine Terminal (in Russia), and at Atyrau PS and Tengiz Head PS (in Kazakhstan).
The Company performed a wide range of works and services from technical assignment through to custody transfer design and implementation, including equipment delivery, installation, commissioning, comprehensive metrological assistance, and operating staff training. The Company’s specialists were first to undertake a complex job of the entire instrumentation fleet calibration and verification both on the Russian and Kazakh part of the pipeline, including its linear section.
Quantor Group is currently providing daily maintenance and upgrade of all the oil pumping stations.
Being a contractor for KazTransOil, Kazakhstan’s national oil transportation company, Quantor commissioned first ever Fisher Rosemount (Emerson Process Management) oil metering skids at Shymkent custody transfer point, Pavlodar Head PS, Kenkiyak line operation control station, and Orsk custody transfer point, and delivered tank farm automated control design solutions, installation and adjustment services, metrological certification and commissioning.
The Company used its best practices to commission a gas metering station at the KazTransOil-owned Zhanazhol Gas Processing Plant in the Aktobe Region of Kazakhstan and to upgrade the oil level measuring system of the PS-6 Tank Farm through installation, adjustment and calibration at the Kenkiyak-Atyrau oil pipeline, which makes part of the Kazakhstan-China transportation route.
The efficient performance secured the Company a niche in the oil and gas sector; moreover, it ranked among the best enterprises in Russia’s building and investment sector in 2002.
Customer-related issues drove the Company management to understanding that project design development was a must, as it would enable creation of an all-in-one construction / upgrade concept, a more efficacious use of funds, shorter project implementation times, and strict adherence to the process requirements.
The Company was not ready to rest on its laurels, and endeavoured business expansion activities. The Company’s dynamic growth and well-matched staff dedicated to individual work sites contributed to this effort. In 2002, realizing that the Republic of Kazakhstan posed vast opportunities for oil and gas companies, and the region displayed an auspicious investment climate, Quantor Engineering Company, together with Zaman Group LLP, founded a limited liability partnership – ZamanQuantor, which has headquarters in Kazakhstan and is technically outfitted and authorized to carry out works to the same extent as Quantor Engineering Company. Moreover, in consistency with the Kazakhstan state program on imports phase-out and local content expansion, Quantor Group is contractually required to recruit and train local Kazakhstan-based specialists.
Quantor’s active involvement in the Kazakh industry ensures jobs for qualified specialists residing in Ufa (the work is arranged in rotations), and contributes to the budget of the Republic of Bashkortostan.
2003 saw Quantor’s Metrology Service being nominated as the best metrology service provider in the Republic of Bashkortostan. In 2004, ZamanQuantor LLP opened an accredited verification laboratory to ensure measurement traceability and accuracy required for in-house as well as on-site service activities.
For MunaiTas North-West Pipeline Company, the Company commissioned and certified oil metering systems at Atyrau PS and Kenkiyak Head PS. From 2008 till present, we have been providing yearly service maintenance and verification of the oil metering stations, gas alarms and other instruments of the Kenkiyak-Atyrau trunk oil pipeline facilities.
From 2009 to June 2012, the Company was Agip КСО’s General Contractor for metrological services at the Kashagan field development phase. The contract was signed for creating a database of Agip КСО-owned instruments, which amounted to above 66,000 in total and were used both offshore and onshore; calibration and verification of various instrument types; testing and further registration of instruments which had not been certified in Kazakhstan before; calibration of vertical and horizontal tanks; and verification of a pipe prover.
The on-site activities in cooperation with NCOC N.V., Agip КСО’s successor, are currently in progress under subcontractor agreements signed with Relay Zholdas LLP. The metering systems and metrological equipment are serviced as part of project implementation with ERSAI Caspian Contractor LLP.
From 2010 till present, Quantor Group has been providing maintenance and metrological assistance services to Karachaganak Petroleum Operating B.V., for the oil and gas metering systems installed in the Karachaganak field. 2012 saw a new contract signed for logistics and metrological services.
Another business line of Quantor Group includes development and implementation of design solutions for construction, retrofit or upgrade of oil and gas facilities.
As an example, the projects implemented include automated process control system design for the oil and gas extraction workshops in the Braguny and Starogroznenskoye fields, and for the separation units of the central gathering facilities in the Oktyabrskoye and Solyonaya Balka fields, carried out under a contract with Rosneft Oil Company (2007); design and estimates for rehabilitation of a metering skid for Uralsk and Yuzhny Oil Pipeline Administration, for Intergas Central Asia (2007-2008); automated process control system design to bring the ЭЛОУ-АВТ-6 and ЛЧ-35-11/600 machine automation and controls in line with industrial safety rules and regulations, using I/A Series DSC SW and HW (Foxboro / Invensys) and SIS Tricon fault tolerant controllers manufactured by Triconex (Saratov Refinery, 2008-2009); upgrade of an automatic foam extinguishing system for the ЛЧ-35-11/600 unit and replacement of air equipment with electric equipment (Uzneftmahsulot , 2010); detailed design engineering for re-equipment of an acetone tank truck loading depot at Ufaorgsintez (2014); design engineering for additional equipment and analyzer installation in the pyrolysis, gas separation and power generation workshops of SIBUR Kstovo (2015) and others.
Quantor Group has established a trust-based partnership with Bashneft Oil Company, and has completed a range of projects at the sites of its subsidiaries, including, as an example, automated process control system (top-level) detailed design engineering for a Л-35-5 unit to upgrade the naphtha splitting circuit (2010); detailed design engineering to expand the automated process control system (top-level) of the Л-24-300 unit and hydrockracker-reformer using Emerson Process Management DeltaV hardware for DCS and SIS (2011); detailed design engineering to upgrade the automated process control system of the oxygen and nitrogen generating plant of the utility supply shop (2012); methanol tank design engineering under a methanol storage reconditioning project, including instrument reading display in the process control system (2013); detailed design engineering for viscometer installation on the commercial fuel oil production pipeline (visbreaker) including automatic dilution dosing (2014) and other.
The Company is pursuing other activities as well, such as cathodic protection of utilities and equipment of oil and gas pipelines; oil and gas facility diagnostics and residual life estimation.
In 2004, the Quantor Group team, in cooperation with StroyTransGaz, completed a vast scope of works during contruction of the Kenkiyak-Atyrau oil pipeline in Kazakhstan, which included adjustment and commissioning of Siemens-based cathodic protection facilities and systems using the latest polarization potential adjustment techniques.
The same scope was later done for KazStroyService OGCC. Quantor Group contributed to an expansion of the Tengiz-Astrakhan oil pipeline owned by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, and to the construction of new Kazakhstan pipelines which extend towards the Chinese border – of the Atasu-Alashankou (2006) and Kenkiyak-Kumkol (2008-2009) oil pipelines (including installation, startup, adjustment, and commissioning of cathodic protection facilities).
Furthermore, Quantor Group delivered, set up and commissioned cathodic protection stations for temporary as well as permanent protection; ensured guarding of the facilities against high-voltage power lines, and installed voltage taps on the Kazakhstan-China trunk gas pipeline (2009-2010); in 2010 to 2011, Quantor Group delivered and commissioned a multiplex transformer rectifier for gas flow measuring purposes on the same pipeline.
The Company is currently carrying out works which include manufacture, supervised installation, and commissioning of a cathodic protection station under the Kazakhstan-China trunk gas pipeline capacity enhancement project.
The Quantor Group team has developed expertise in tackling complicated technical issues related to design modification and facility upgrade. Many of the Kazakhstan-based customers had been facing difficulty in ensuring operability of their cathodic protection systems, or in completing the installation and commissioning thereof, which resulted from inadequate survey and design. To address such issues, our specialists carried out a survey and suggested new engineering solutions.
In this manner, Quantor Group upgraded the KazTransOil-owned cathodic protection system on the Uzen-Atyrau-Samara and Prorva-Kulsary oil pipelines, with SCADA output of the data received from the cathodic protection stations (2007). For the Caspian Pipeline Consortium-K, a full-scale survey of the Tengiz Head PS and Atyrau PS cathodic protection systems was performed in 2010, including development of a 3D mathematical model of active as well as passive cathodic protection of the pumping station platforms.
Under contracts signed with Kazakhstan-China Pipeline LLP, Quantor Group also carried out cathodic protection survey on the Atasu-Alashankou and Kenkiyak-Kumkol trunk oil pipelines to estimate their safety and fail safety level (2012).
A project implemented as of today includes survey, delivery, commissioning, maintenance and repair of the cathodic protection facilities in the Dunga field operated by Maersk Oil Kazakhstan GmbH. Under this project, Quantor Group has presented survey results and is delivering cathodic protection design solutions. For the first time in the practice of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Company carried out a major repair of the cathodic protection system on the carbonate line using magnetite anodes which feature high corrosion resistance to active media, and are light-weight and small in size.
Quantor Group was certified to ISO 9001 in 2007, which pushed significantly the boundaries of the business.
In 2009, the Company shifted to an integrated occupational health and safety, environmental and quality management system compliant with ISO 9001:2008, ISO 14001:2004 and OHSAS 18001:2007, which was certified with MOODY INTERNATIONAL. This international certificate enabled the Quantor Group performance quality to level up with the international requirements in all activities throughout the CIS as well as abroad.