Gazprom Launches Metrology Center Unique to Russia

The commissioning ceremony for Gazprom's Metrology Center equipped with the Special National Primary Standard for high-pressure natural gas flow took place today via a conference call at St. Petersburg International Gas Forum 2024.

Taking part in the event were Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, Sergey Tsivilev, Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation, and Anton Shalaev, Head of the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology.

The Metrology Center of Gazprom is Russia's first-ever site for the testing, verification and calibration of high-precision flow meters, i. e. the instruments that measure gas volumetric flow rate during its transmission by trunklines. The Center's facilities provide the possibility to examine and verify flow meters that work with a wide range of pressures (from 0.1 to 10 MPa), including the instruments that are installed at export gas pipelines.

The key component of the Metrology Center is the Special National Primary Standard for high-pressure natural gas flow. It is a unique process unit that, with the highest accuracy, will transfer the value corresponding to the standard cubic meter of gas to the metrological unit in order to verify the flow meters.

All equipment that was used in the creation of the metrology center is of Russian make. A number of innovative solutions developed by Russian companies were implemented. For instance, industrial high-pressure blowers with a capacity of 1.25 MW for ensuring gas movement and a unique cooling system for maintaining a stable temperature of the working medium (plus 20 degrees Celsius) were manufactured specially for the calibration unit.

“A facility that is unique to the Russian Federation has been created. From now on, the operational readiness of high-precision industrial gas flow measurement instruments can be ensured in Russia. Moreover, we can do it using Gazprom's own technical base. Thus, another important step has been taken to secure the technological sovereignty of Russia,” said Alexey Miller.