A thorough and comprehensive scientific analysis of the current stage of the Russian and global oil and gas industry development allows to identify the critical challenges the Company faces. The identified factors have a decisive impact on the Company's competitive position, both now and in the future. Today, providing responses to these critical challenges creates the main development directions for the Company's innovation potential. Such include:

• preparedness to increase the current level of hydrocarbon production, maintaining the competitiveness of the unit cost of the reserves increment;
• comprehensive efficiency increase in the production of traditional oil reserves;
• increase of the economic efficiency due to:
  • minimized losses at all production stages;
  • a new level of energy efficiency;
  • equipping production facilities with technologies and equipment aimed at processing cheap raw materials (heavy oils, components of fatty and associated petroleum gas);
• ensuring technological preparedness for large-scale involvement of hard-to-recover reserves in production, reducing the "price threshold" for their cost-effective operation;
• ensuring technological independence, localization of production of basic technological components;
• creation of gas-processing plants, superior in quality over the foreign analogues, aimed at mobile updating of the product range;
• increased yield of new high-tech high-quality motor fuels, motor oils and lubricants;
• creation of large integrated oil and gas chemical clusters targeting the growing high-margin market, and development of the support infrastructure;
• ensuring compliance with the strictest requirements of environmental standards for both products and respective production facilities.