[Cyclefrance]

The course was aimed at the oil market, with my two days covering freight, storage and pipelines. Kazakhstan has one of the largest oilfields in the Soviet ex-block at Tengiz, and this is now piped to the Black Sea port of Novorossijsk through an entrenched 800 mile pipeline. The crude oil that comes from the field is very high in sulphur and undergoes an innovative de-sulphurisation process developped by Chevron. For those that like facts and figures, the pipeline currently handles 800,000 bbls/day and export is generally via 100,000 ton vessels of which 315 were loaded last year.

Anyway, this is the sort of stuff the class had to endure - day 1, I had about 42 in the class, but day 2 reduced to 22 because of the subject matter - in the second picture you can see my translator standing to the left of the screen - usually we have simultaneous translation, but this time it was subsequent - so I spoke a sentence and the translator then repeated my words in Russian - OK, but it tends to slow down the teaching, and time management can become an issue as a result:

.