No. 1, 2008

LUKOIL's corporate museum helps reconstruct Russian industrial history

The history of the Russian oil industry is more than 200 years long and it is no wonder that there are still quite a few “blank spots” in it. Active efforts to fill them in are being made by the staff of LUKOIL’s corporate museum, whose displays are of substantial interest not only to oil industry workers but also to all enthusiasts for the nation’s history.

In search of a display concept

The history of LUKOIL’s corporate museum is only three years long. From the outset, its staff was faced with the challenge of finding the optimum display solution within rather limited space.

It should be noted that two different viewpoints came into a clash when the display concept was still being developed. Some people felt the museum should focus solely on LUKOIL’s biography while others stressed it should display the entire glorious history of the Russian oil industry.

The final choice was made in favor of the latter proposal, for the present cannot be understood without the knowledge of the past. The Company’s role and place in the industry, the country and the world at large cannot be appreciated without knowing by whom, in what conditions and at what price LUKOIL was created to become a leader of the world oil and gas business today. So, it is quite clear why we have decided against filling the display with scale models and mockups of modern oil and gas equipment highlighting the most up-to-date R&D achievements and innovations. Even though, from the standpoint of PR technologies, this would be a graphic demonstration of the present-day potential of the Company oriented toward the latest achievements of technological progress.

We have assured ourselves, in the first place, of the importance of building up an original display composition as an environment having educational, intellect enhancing and world outlook forming functions, which would undoubtedly have an impact on the shaping of the personality of an oil industry specialist. Accordingly, the museum’s staff sought to enhance the humanitarian thrust of our display and make it a means to overcome the technocratic way of thinking giving primacy to absolutization of scientific authority and imparting an unjustified priority on technical and technological solutions and methods, as a result of which individual specialists come to lack the culture of thought, interpersonal interactions, behavior, creative identify, and moral zeal.

So, we ably used the limited space of the museum’s premises not only to narrate the Company’s history but also to show the entire history of the country’s oil industry, beginning from the revolutionary transformations carried out by Russian Emperor Peter the Great in the 18th century.

The legends of the past obscure…

The display that numerous visitors to LUKOIL’s museum can see today embodies the concept of depicting the industry on a most extensive scale. The showcases present, one after another, pages of the annals of the struggle for Russian oil: decrees by Peter the Great and petitions by Fyodor Pryadunov, the first Russian oilman, dating back to 1745, tempestuous growth of the Baku oil fields at the turn of the 20th century and their nearly complete devastation on the eve of World War I, nationalization of the oil industry by the Bolsheviks and the slave labor of the USSR’s finest oilmen in Stalinist prison camps, fierce battles for the Caucasus oil fields during World War II and development of the “Second Baku” (the nickname of oil fields between the Volga and Ural rivers), rehabilitation of the industry after WWII, and high-powered work at new oilfield projects in Western Siberia.

The display also features rare materials related to the history of Russia’s first vertically integrated oil companies – the Baku Oil Company (established in 1874), the Nobel Brothers’ Partnership for Oil Production (1879), and others. They include stock certificates, product samples, advertising materials, correspondence, and memorial signs and badges. As a matter of fact, some of these exhibits are to be seen at an exhibition put up in the lobby of the Company’s head office.

Various multimedia tools make it possible for the museum’s visitors to see fragments of old documentaries and, at multimedia kiosks, familiarize themselves on their own with the biographies of the country’s outstanding oilmen and the Company’s veterans and the history of the numerous organizations comprising the LUKOIL Group and the oil industry as a whole. Those who wish may take a kind of a concise lecture course in hydrocarbon production, processing and marketing and the present-day situation in the world market of petroleum products, which will not take them much time.

In addition, the museum’s visitors have at their disposal an extensive video library containing over a hundred DVD films about the Company and its subsidiaries, as well as about the history of the industry.

Modern-day exhibits in a historic interior

A large section of the display is devoted to the history of LUKOIL, its present-day activities and plans for the future. An interactive map of the world introduces the spectator to the LUKOIL Group’s companies located in various parts of the world. The Alley of Fame multimedia sensor kiosk keeps information about the Company’s workers and veterans distinguished with a wide variety of awards – from governmental and departmental awards to LUKOIL’s honorary title “Merited Worker of the Company.” In addition, it carefully preserves information about people who were in different years honored by having their names installed on the Company’s Best Workers honors board at LUKOIL’s head office. The LUKOIL’s Depositories section contains samples of oils and condensates, cores and minerals from various fields being developed by the Company.

Widely represented are achievements in the field of hydrocarbon production, oil and gas processing, petrochemistry, and petroleum products marketing. The Company’s corporate management system and its human resources development and social policies are explained. A special place in the display is given to issues of LUKOIL’s social responsibility. The Company’s management has set before the museum the task of not only becoming a cultural and educational center for the staff of its head office but also of taking on the responsibility for developing the museum business in the Company and the organizations of the LUKOIL Group and for working out and implementing a unified corporate museum policy. At present, the Company has 14 museums functioning under its auspices. Some of them have been inherited from the Soviet era, when the setting up of a museum was a matter of honor for every enterprise. Over the past years, these museums have assembled substantial collections, the museums of LUKOIL-Permnefteorgsintez, LUKOIL-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez, the Odessa Refinery, and Karpatneftekhim, in particular.

In the recent years, the companies of the LUKOIL Group have been setting up an ever-greater number of corporate museums, for instance, LUKOIL-Nizhnevolzhskneft and LUKOIL-Ukhtaneftepererabotka. In September 2005, during the celebrations of the 20th anniversary of the town of

Kogalym, LUKOIL President Vagit Alekperov opened a museum of LUKOIL-Western Siberia. Shortly before that event, the Sukhoy Bor open-air historical complex had been set up at the legendary Tryokhozyornoye oil field in honor of an anniversary of the Shaim oil-bearing region near the town of Uray. There is also a museum corner functioning at the office of the Langepasneftegaz territorial production division. The foreign companies of the LUKOIL Group are keeping apace with them. In the city of Burgas (Bulgaria), the personnel of and visitors to the local refinery have an opportunity to visit an exhibition hall where paintings featuring the company are on display. In the Romanian city of Ploesti, the display of LUKOIL-Petrotel’s museum introduces the visitors to the history of the Ploesti refinery. LUKOIL-Kaliningradmorneft and Serbia’s Beopetrol have announced their plans for setting up museums in the near future.

Summing up the results of the first three years of our work, I can say that the staff of LUKOIL’s corporate museum have successfully implemented in practice the principle of exploring the historical multinational heritage of the Russian oil industry, which enables people to consciously perceive life and contemporary human society and find their bearings in social space, and fosters in them general and political culture, moral qualities, patriotism, and a tolerant and respectful attitude toward other people and ethnic groups. The museum’s exhibition devoted to the preindustrial, industrial and present-day periods in the history of the Russian oil industry makes it possible graphically to show the economic, social and political consequences of the industrial, technological and information revolution and the substantial part played in it by the human being. All of this helps people, oil industry workers above all, develop an active stand in life, a sense of responsibility for the results of one’s labor and a better positioning of the person’s moral reference points, value attitudes and life parameters, thus encouraging personal participation in social transformations and helping overcome the utilitarian and technological approach toward evaluation of social and economic phenomena in the development of society.