At the end of April, the Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas hosted the International Youth Scientific Conference "Oil and Gas – 2018". It was attended by more than 2,000 young scientists, specialists and students of Russian and foreign industry organizations and universities. Among the participants was the delegation of the Polytechnic University – it included employees of the Research Institute "Nanotechnology and New Materials" of the YURSPU (NPI) Ivan Zubkov and Svetlana Nekroenko.

The conference was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation, the Russian Gas Society and leading oil and gas companies. The guest of the event was Pavel Sorokin, Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation. He noted the important role of the conference organizers' aspirations in developing the skills of project and research activities and improving the intellectual level of young people in the oil and gas industry.

The heads of PJSC LUKOIL, Shell Concern, Schlumberger, Siemens, General Electric and others also spoke at the plenary session, presenting in their reports the most promising areas of the companies' work, the results already achieved and plans for the future.

In 23 thematic areas of the conference, more than 1,000 scientific papers of young scientists who passed the preliminary selection stage were presented this time. In them, the participants presented their scientific and research papers, exchanged experience and best practices, discussed with specialists of enterprises and scientists about the current problems and tasks of the oil and gas industry.

In his report, Ivan Zubkov, a master's student of the Faculty of Technology of YURSPU (NPI), spoke about the technology of processing associated petroleum gas (APG) into synthetic motor fuels, and Svetlana Nekroenko (a master's student of FIOP) presented the results of an economic assessment of a modular APG processing plant with a capacity of 10,000 tons per year. Both reports, prepared within the framework of the state task "Technology of Arctic diesel fuel from natural gases", aroused lively interest among the participants and high appreciation of the organizers of the conference.