Gubkin Oil and Gas University.

Moscow Mayor Luzhkov, Academician Anatoly Dmitrievsky, and the owner of Britain’s Chelsea Football Club, Roman Abramovich, have one thing in common – they all attended the Gubkin University.

Students affectionately call this university “Kerosinka” (the “oil stove” in Russian). Officially it carries the name of the Father of Soviet Oil Geology, Ivan Mikhailovich Gubkin. It’s the Russian State University of Oil and Gas in Moscow, a beehive of industry supported R&D, which makes poignant the lessons of students who will one day manage the largest hydrocarbon resources outside the Middle East.

Gubkin University was birthed in the throes of the Bolshevik Revolution. Today it is a centre for R&D supported by the bastions of the capitalist world – including private Russian oil companies – and its English speaking graduates are highly sought after by global oil industry that is becoming increasingly alarmed by the growing shortage of petroleum science graduates worldwide.

In 1918, the people’s Commissariat Council established the Moscow Mining Academy, and by 1920, the geology and mining faculties opened. I.M. Gubkin was Dean when the academy’s first students graduated in 1924.

In its first 10 years, Gubkin University trained 1,500 Soviet oil specialists, and became the principal school of the Soviet industry. Its scholars – geologists, mining engineers, economists, chemical and mechanical engineers, - have explored the Arctic offshore, the Siberian tundra and taiga, the deserts of Central Asia. The university, staffed today by 253 professors and 500 assistant professors, has graduated 70,000 degreed engineers, PhDs and Doctors of science who have worked not only in Russia but also in 100 foreign countries.

Its four original departments – geology and geophysics, oil and gas field development, chemical engineering and economics – have evolved with the industry. A faculty of automation and computers science was added in 1962, followed by a faculty of pipeline transport system design, construction and operation. In 1991 the university became the only one training lawyers for the petroleum sector, and in 1998 the environmental engineering faculty was establishing.

Today the university is continuously expanding with new specialties, opening the first gas chemistry department in Russia, and taking a new direction in oil products and gas supply. Gubkin’s university is also unique in having Russia only faculty for offshore.

Gubkin Oil and Gas University graduates work in more than 55 countries in the world. Schlumberger alone employs some 800 of its alumni. About five percent of students leave to work abroad right after graduation, and more leave as their career advances; 15-20 percent of graduates work at foreign companies in Russia, such as Halliburton and Total. The job requirements are tough – a high GPA (4.5 and up), working knowledge of languages (primarily English), computer literacy, and for many technical majors – a good understanding of economics.

Some 45 percent of Gubkin’s students graduated high school valedictorian, and the university received 4.7 applications per spot. Entrance examinations are given in the Russian language, mathematics, and physics. Chemistry majors are currently in the toughest competitions for admission. “The number of entrants with honors in 2006 exceeded 860 people. Traditionally, the competition is very high at such departments as geology, oil and gas field development, chemical technology and environment, automation and computer science, economics and managements, law.

Gubkin hosts annually 10 to 12 large scientific conferences, symposium and seminars, and partners with the world’s other leading universities of similar specialty: Texas A&M University, the University of Zigen (Germany), Freiberg Mountain Academy (Germany), the French Oil Institute (IFP), Rogaland University (Norway), the Chinese Oil University, and many others. In its turn, the university is the fountainhead of many others higher education establishments. The Ufa State Oil Technical University, the Almetyevsk Oil Institute, and the Ukhta State Technical University were all formed on the basis of its branches.