Ukraine Threatened With Becoming Technological Dumpsite?
Despite its own substantial technical and scientific potential, Ukraine has been widely buying obsolete foreign technologies. In the opinion of Anatoly Morozov, President of the Ukrainian Academy of Technological Sciences, the country is gradually becoming Europe’s small dumpsite. “The more of these outmoded technologies we buy, the farther we lag behind the world technology market,” he concludes.
The development of energy- effective technologies, especially in the fuel/electricity sector, was one of the major topics discussed at a roundtable called Ukrainian Technologies On the Threshold of the Third Millennium. The participants pointed out that, with over one billion tons of oil in explored deposits, total oil extraction in Ukraine has reached a mere 300,000 tons. Thus, it is no surprise that for the efficiency of using its oil deposits Ukraine is far behind international levels, 21% vs. 45%, respectively. Since 80% of oil in deposits is regarded as difficult for extraction, and only new technologies can help increase the oil output.
Former head of the State Committee For Oil and Gas Industry and now scientist Yevhen Dovzhok maintains that new technologies must be used to condense the existing networks of shafts at oil and gas fields. This can be done by drilling new shafts, but, given the 4 to 5 km. depth of the oil beds, such projects would be extremely expensive. The other option is much more effective, estimated at 30% of the cost of drilling new shafts, Mr. Dovzhok continues. It provides for drilling slanted shafts from existing ones. Shafts can also be drilled horizontally but this kind of extraction needs state-of-the-art technologies. There are such shafts in Ukraine but their number is small.
The use of new technologies in the oil and gas sector has been restrained by the necessity to buy the equipment needed to modernize extraction from abroad. On the other hand, due to shortfalls in funding, Ukraine cannot implement the programs endorsed back in the early nineties and aimed at developing domestic equipment. The picture looks even grimmer in the light of Dovzhko’s admission that not a single research institution in Ukraine is involved in designing new technologies for the oil and gas industry.
The contribution of domestic technologists in other sectors of the mining industry looks much more impressive. For example, because its own supplies phosphates are too meager, Ukraine has been importing inputs to make phosphate fertilizers for years. Now, according to UATS Academician Mykola Havrylenko, Ukraine has developed and introduced a technology for processing phosphorites into super-phosphate by using new methods of dressing and temperature treatment of poor ores. Effective technologies are also used for the concentration of manganese and iron ores, something which amounts to opening new mineral deposits.
