"Novoportovskoye is one of the largest fields of exploitable oil and gas condensates in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District. Recoverable C1 and C2 reserves are more than 250 million tonnes of oil and condensate, with over 320 billion cubic metres of gas (including the Palaeozoic strata). "
One step forward and 2 steps back appears to be what we will be seeing in 2015 when it comes to climate policy goals, rhetoric and action, as the G7 ended this weekend in Bavaria. The G7, as regards to climate issues, was a lead up to the all important United Nations climate talks in Paris later this year. Chancellor Merkel announced that the parties agreed to “decarbonise the global economy in the course of this century”. We can hope that 2015 will be the year that the world wakes up and addresses the greatest threat to humanity that the world has ever seen. There is a wrench in the good intentions besides Canada, and that wrench is called Russia. (Caveat- we do not know what will happen with sanctions on Russia due to the crisis in the Ukraine and/or whether it will cross over to climate policy).
In 2013, The Economist refrred to Russia's Gazprom as a "wounded giant" that is bloated and slow when it comes to adapting to new changes in the fossil fuel market, particularly as it relates to the shale boom in the US and Europe.
Gazprom is not a normal company. It serves two masters. As a firm that issues shares to outside investors, it should in theory strive to maximise profits in the long run. But since it is majority-owned by the Russian state, it pursues political goals, too.
In practice, it serves one master more assiduously than the other. As President Vladimir Putin consolidated his power in the early 2000s, he built Gazprom into a main instrument of Russia’s new state capitalism. He appointed allies to top positions. He used Gazprom as a tool of foreign policy, for example by cutting off gas supplies to Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova during political rows.
snip
Gazprom badly needs to find two things: new sources of gas, and new markets. Neither will be easy. Its gasfields are running down. The International Energy Agency, a rich-world energy club, reckons Russia’s gas producers must spend $730 billion by 2035 merely to replace most of their current production of 655 billion cubic metres a year. But much of Gazprom’s 35 trillion cubic metres of reserves are in barely accessible places such as the Yamal Peninsula, the Far East and Eastern Siberia. Gazprom will have to pay much more to get this gas out of the ground. Can it do that?
That was 2013. The Yamal Peninsula has changed from a challenge to an opportunity for Russia. Europe will have an influx of an additional fossil fuel market We now know that Putin has been able to meet the challenges regarding his gas and oil reserves head on. Climate goals will have to take Putin's actions into account in any CO2 emission targets, IMO. We can hope that Western Europe will be able to resist the urge to delay their climate targets without succumbing to the temptation of cheap and accessible fossil fuels.
The Siberian Times reports the discouraging and depressing news.
History was made earlier this year when 16,000 tonnes of Novy Port oil set off from Yamal on board tankers destined for Europe via the new Northern Sea Route.
Since then a number of other ships have made the same journey over the Arctic, with a total of 110,000 tonnes navigating its way north from the Novoportovskoye field in Yamal.
Alexander Dyukov, chairman of the board of Gazprom Neft, said: 'The long-term strategy of is to increase production in the fields of the far north, both on land and at sea. These projects will continue to develop rapidly and within a few years they will account for a substantial part of the company's production.
'We are continuing to develop uniquely for the Russian oil and gas industry technical, logistical and marketing solutions that allow us not only to begin the year-round industrial development of Novoportovskoye field, but also increase the share of export payments in Russian roubles.'
So what has never existed before has now made this change in shipping over the forbidding arctic possible? Nuclear powered ice breakers. They have been successfully been built by ROSATOM, another Russian/ Putin state monopoly. Prior to this development, distributing oil and gas to Europe required pipelines and the need to ship in the Mediterranean and via the Suez canal shaving 3 weeks off the delivery.
Of course this state run nuclear industry itself is also in the news for other reasons,. Russia is fueling it's arctic conquest with uranium fueled ice breakers. Putin has put a strangle hold on uranium supplies by acquiring Uranium One Mines in Kazakhstan, Australia, & the US.
Mining Awareness reports: (I suggest reading this article as Rosatom has been able to achieve this in the US due to NAFTA).
Russia plans to use uranium to power both its icebreaker ships and its offshore oil and gas projects:
“Floating nuclear power stations (Russian: плавучая атомная теплоэлектростанция малой мощности, АТЭС ММ – lit. floating combined heat and power low-power nuclear station) are vessels projected by Rosatom that present self-contained, low-capacity, floating nuclear power plants. The stations are to be mass-built at shipbuilding facilities and then towed to the destination point in coastal waters near a city, a town or an industrial enterprise. Although the world’s first floating nuclear power station was MH-1A built in the 1960s, the Rosatom project represents the first mass production of that kind of vessel. By 2015, at least seven of the vessels are supposed to be built.[1]
Floating nuclear power stations are planned to be used mainly in the Russian Arctic. Five of these will be used by Gazprom for offshore oil and gas field development and for operations on the Kola and Yamal peninsulas.[3] Other locations include Dudinka on the Taymyr Peninsula, Vilyuchinsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula and Pevek on the Chukchi Peninsula.[7] In 2007, Rosatom signed an agreement with the Sakha Republic to build a floating plant for its northern parts, using smaller ABV reactors
As I noted in the beginning of this diary one step forward (at least we can hope) and two steps back. Will we be able to eliminate the scourge of fossil fuels soon?