Evgeny Farrakhov: about "Case-In" and more

On the sidelines of the CASE-IN International Engineering Championship in the field of Geological Exploration, held at MGRI-RGGRU, Svetlana Luchko, head of the Public Relations Department, managed to ask a few questions to one of its expert organizers, Evgeny Gatovich Farrakhov, Honored Geologist of Russia, Candidate of Technical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, graduate of MGRI. 

- How do you assess the case study method in the training of future engineers? 
- Very positive. No wonder one of the founders of the historical doctrine of the development of mankind said this: at the highest stage of humanity there will be only three specialties – doctors, teachers and engineers. I wanted to tell the future engineer the following:  You have to be brave in any place, because our graduates aim to work in the Arctic, to work in the hard-to-reach northeastern regions of Russia. 

- What do you mean by "courage"? 
- It is always worth remembering that there are two types of courage. Courage out of knowledge is always constructive - it's great, and sometimes courage out of ignorance, out of stupidity. Unfortunately, it leads to sad consequences, for example, when a platform is sunk in the Sea of Okhotsk, or when mines collapse ... And when, according to knowledge, new deposits are discovered, when there is an understanding of the strategy of the future.… I would like to wish our students: guys, be brave in knowledge! 

- Evgeny Gatovich, you know that our University is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. What  Would you wish the Exploration Company a happy anniversary? 
- The main thing is that MGRI-RGGRU continues to be the country's leading university of geological orientation and that artificial problems with reorganizations and "optimizations" end. The top officials of the state paid attention to geology and geological prospectors. After all, they participate in shaping the image of the future, which must certainly take place. 
This will lead to respect for the profession of geologist, it will become in demand. But now we see one thing – there is no word "geology" in any federal executive authority of our government. Even the relevant Agency is called the word "subsoil use". A geologist has never been a subsurface user. If so, should astronomers be called "space users"?   

- What would you say about the creation of the Ministry of Geology? 
- Unfortunately, this is still unrealistic. Because previously, the entire Ministry of Geology of the USSR and the Ministry of Geology of the RSFSR numbered over half a million people. And now we have only twenty thousand in the public sector.  In terms of the scope of tasks for the geology of our country, this is the number of only one small territorial administration from the 80s. 
I very much hope that the creation of a unified center for managerial, industrial, scientific competencies and state financial resources responsible for the reproduction of the country's mineral resource base, coordinating the activities of all subsurface users for geological exploration and development of subsurface resources based on advanced technologies, as reflected in the Decision of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy of 30.01.2018, should include in the end, give a good positive effect. 

- Now the private market is seriously developing in geology. How does this fit in with the interests of the state? 
- It makes no sense to create a new ministry when 80% of territories have private owners. It is necessary to strictly distinguish between what the state should be responsible for and what business should be responsible for: so far there is no such difference, and it has not been defined. We, the Russian Geological Society, are now raising the issue of creating a new law on geological exploration. Because the "Law on Mineral Resources" says only two or three sentences on this topic. 
In fact, what the state should be doing is studying the geological structure of the Earth and its mineral resource potential.  But private companies should be engaged in search, exploration and production. This is the difference between strategy and tactics. The government should have a strategy, and business should have tactics. 

- So the new law will divide the functionality between business and the state? 
- To some extent, yes. For example, we currently spend about 4.5 billion budget dollars on the study of solid minerals, of which about 3.5 billion are spent on the search for gold- why?. We already have about 14 thousand tons of gold reserves prepared. And we produce up to 300 tons per year. Let not the state, but the "goldsmiths" themselves invest in the development of gold mining. 
Here is another example. Why is the government spending a lot of money on geological exploration in the oil industry? At the same time, 80% of the fields and prospective oil-bearing areas are in a distributed fund, i.e. controlled by private companies.  They should be the ones to explore and explore promising territories themselves, rather than relying on the state. 

- How do you assess the profession itself - geologist? 
- Geologist is the best profession! In it, a person always sees the result of work in the past, makes discoveries in the present and anticipates the future. 

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