Foreign oil companies doing business in the former U.S.S.R. are relying increasingly on advertising to make their names widely recognized in the old Soviet empire (OGJ, Jan. 6, p. 33).
France's Total has joined international petroleum giants such as Elf Aquitaine and Italy's Agip in telling Russian newspaper readers about its operations.
In a recent full page ad in the Moscow newspaper Izvestia, Total depicted pumping units in a Russian oil field with a large caption reading: "For Some, This Oil Field Is Entirely Depleted; For Total, It's Only Half Developed."
The ad emphasized that Total will help the Russian economy because the advanced technology it will employ in its joint ventures can improve crude recovery in Tatarstan's Romashkino field, on the U.S.S.R.'s largest, and in the mi republic's Timan-Pechora basin in the northeast comer of European Russia.
The ad declared, "We are ready 'to broaden cooperation (with Russia) on a long term basis in all areas of the oil and gas industry from the wellhead to the gasoline pump. Together with our Russian partners, we will work to improve the well-being of the Russian people.
It is not without reason that our name is Total."
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