Oil production at the Lanžhot field ends after 70 years

More space, more light and room for growth. On 18 November this year, MND Ukraine officially opened its new modern offices in Lviv. The spacious, wood-panelled and airy premises offer employees significantly better working conditions and a representative setting for meetings. The new headquarters in the very centre of the city also allows for further planned growth of the team.

The MND Group has been operating in Ukraine for over ten years and, despite the war, it has managed not only to maintain operations but also to gradually develop gas production. However, everyday work takes place in conditions that most of us in Czechia or Germany can hardly imagine. We talked to Volodya Stebletsky, Technical Director of MND Ukraine, about how MND Ukraine works today, what is most difficult and what gives them the strength to continue.

Four times more crude oil than before is sent by MND from the Lusatian railway station to Kralupy nad Vltavou these weeks. The reason for this is the termination of transport via the Druzhba pipeline. All the crude oil produced must be transported by tanker - first by truck, then by rail.

In March 2025, the abandonment of three production wells in the Prušánky area was successfully completed - specifically wells Prušánky 4b, 6 and 8. Together, these probes opened and produced the Labe horizon in the Middle Baden on the subsiding crust of the Schrattenberg fault system.

Even better than the optimistic models expected. The data from the Tynivskaya licence in western Ukraine speak clearly, the deposit has huge potential, which MND Ukraine is gradually uncovering. Daily production is increasing day by day and the biggest limitation is the surface technology, which lacks sufficient capacity and is still being strengthened.

In June, colleagues used a unique method at the Krumvíř 3 well - for the first time in the history of MND, a thermal isolation method using a bismuth-tin alloy was applied. And as it turned out, it not only works, but has the potential to solve a whole range of technical challenges. The first deployment took place in challenging conditions that conventional methods would have found difficult to handle - or even at all.

The following lines provide an excellent example of how the cooperation between the Czech and Ukrainian parts of MND works. The bearing engineer Milan Pagáč is creating a dynamic model of the Tynivska deposit, where MND Ukraine is successfully mining and continuously increasing production. At the beginning of June this year it was more than 500 thousand cubic meters per day.

This report brings you the first part of the interesting winemakers who work in our group. We start in Čejkovice, where father and son, Jiří and Petr Št'avík, cultivate their lines. Petr works in MND as the head of the mechanical department and Jiří is the manager of the Dambořice storage facility.

During the day he looks underground and works on dynamic models of bearings, after work he takes his camera and looks up at the stars. In his spare time, MND bearing engineer Milan Pagáč is an astrophotographer. He combines two hobbies: photography and his interest in space observation, which has been with him since childhood. His pictures are well known to many MND employees - they have appeared in the calendars of Drilling, where Milan's wife also works.

The last drilling here was in the summer of 2023. While the frogs were croaking then, now, at the end of winter, there are plenty of hares and deer roaming the surrounding fields. And in the evenings, beavers are regularly seen cupitating in the adjacent Burnt Creek.

The drilling and subsequent disposal of the probe is a fascinating process that can be likened to the life cycle from birth to death. Every well, whether exploratory or production, has its own life story. Repot is now bringing you a series that will present interesting reclamations of our specific sites one by one. But in this issue, let's talk in general terms about what such reclamation looks like, why it's done in the first place, and how much it actually costs.

Successful development of the Tynivska licence, the Girska extension, the acquisition of Pivdeno Girska and the plan for the first well at Zhukyvska. MND has moved up a gear in Ukraine. And they are on track for further milestones. This year, the company wants to reach 150 million cubic meters of gas production in the country. Lukáš Svozil is in charge of MND's Ukrainian operations and spends much of his time on the road.

"Our success is built on two fundamental pillars that complement each other. The first pillar is a strong team in Lviv. The second is the great support from Hodonin," he says.