SURGUT

city and port, Khanty-Mansi autonomous okrug (district), Tyumen oblast (province), Russia, on the Ob River. Incorporated in 1965, Surgut is one of the main administrative and supply centres of the Western Siberian oil fields. Surgut has an enormous thermal-power station. The city is linked by railroad with Nizhnevartovsk to the east and Tobolsk and Tyumen to the southwest. A railroad from Surgut to the Urengoy natural-gas fields to the north was completed in the early 1980s to supply the huge Arctic natural-gas fields. Pop. (1992 est.) 260,000.