Current Time in Surgut, Russia

Surgut lies in western Siberia, on the right bank of the Ob River in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, roughly two and a half thousand kilometres east of Moscow. The surrounding landscape is one of the largest wetland systems on earth, a seemingly endless expanse of taiga forest, peat bog and river channels that freeze solid for half the year. Winters are long and severe, with temperatures often falling below minus thirty, while short summers can be surprisingly warm and are famous for mosquitoes and for nights that barely grow dark.

Around four hundred thousand people live here, making Surgut by far the largest city in the district, considerably bigger than the regional capital itself. Its importance is national, because this is the centre of the Russian oil industry. The region produces a very large share of the country's crude oil, and the company headquartered here is among the biggest producers in Russia.

The town was founded in 1594 as a wooden fortress on the frontier of Siberia, one of a chain of outposts established after the conquest of the Khanate of Sibir to secure the fur trade and collect tribute. For three centuries it remained tiny and remote, a place of exile and river traffic that at one point lost its town status entirely. Everything changed in the 1960s with the discovery of vast oil fields in the surrounding swamps. Geologists, builders and workers arrived from every part of the Soviet Union, a railway was driven north through frozen marshland, and within two decades a modern city of apartment blocks, schools and power stations stood where there had been almost nothing.

Two enormous thermal power stations burning associated gas from the oil fields supply electricity across the Urals and Siberia, and one of them ranks among the most powerful gas fired stations in the world. The city's other symbol is the Yugra Bridge across the Ob, a striking cable stayed structure whose single tall pylon carries one of the longest spans of its type ever built, standing out dramatically against the flat horizon.

Surgut is a young, prosperous and well equipped city with modern sports complexes, an aquapark, theatres, a philharmonic hall and a large art museum. The historic and ethnographic complex known as the Old Surgut recreates the wooden architecture of the original settlement, including a striking dark timber church, and museums present the culture of the Khanty and Mansi peoples, the indigenous reindeer herders and fishers of this land, whose traditions continue in the surrounding districts.

Surgut State University and a pedagogical university serve a large student population, and the city has one of the busiest airports in Siberia along with rail links south to Tyumen and north toward the gas fields of Yamal. Buses and taxis serve the compact urban area.

Surgut is notable as an old Siberian outpost transformed into a modern energy capital in the middle of the world's greatest wetland.