As in Sakhalin, in the Western Arctic, the new Russia inherited a well-studied shelf from the Soviet legacy. For a quarter of a century of active work, the Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka trust, using the Sevastopol, Valentin Shashin and Viktor Muravlenko drilling ships, as well as floating drilling rigs, discovered 15 oil and gas fields in the Barents and Kara Seas. The total volume of reserves on the Western Arctic shelf turned out to be huge – about 500 million tons of oil and more than 5 trillion cubic meters of gas!
Alas, it is not yet possible to fully materialize and monetize these gigantic reserves. A vivid example of a mega-project “shelved” is the giant Shtokman field in the Barents Sea, named after the founder of Russian physical oceanography, Vladimir Shtokman. The field, discovered back in 1987, is among the top ten gas fields in the world in terms of reserves (about 4 trillion cubic meters of natural gas and 60 million tons of gas condensate).
In 2002, Gazprom received a license to develop the field and then prepared a feasibility study. The operator of the first phase of the project was Gazprom’s subsidiary Shtokman Development. At the first stage, it was planned to produce 22 billion cubic meters of gas annually at Shtokman, the maximum production volume was to be 67 billion cubic meters per year. There were also powerful foreign partners – the French Total and the Norwegian Statoil (now – Equinor).
Alas, in 2012 the project was stopped, mainly due to increased competition from US shale gas suppliers. In 2020, Shtokman Development as a legal entity was liquidated, and the prospects for resuming the project, even in the long term, are not yet visible.
Currently, only one field has been put into operation on the Russian Western Arctic shelf – Prirazlomnoye, located in the southeast of the Barents Sea, 60 km from the coastal village of Varandey. The recoverable reserves of the field are about 80 million tons of oil; Gazprom Neft is producing 3 million tons of oil per year (with the prospect of growing to 5 million tons per year) from the Prirazlomnaya ice-resistant stationary platform. The project is being implemented successfully, but at the same time, it should be noted the duration of its investment cycle – for example, 18 years have passed from the moment of laying the platform at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk to the start of production!
For obvious reasons, on land, that is, in the western part of the vast Timano-Pechora oil and gas province, work is faster and more productive. The largest fields here are Kharyaginskoye with reserves of 160 million tons of oil and Trebs-Titov with reserves of 140 million tons. In Kharyaga, there is a PSA with the participation of the same Total and Statoil, as well as Russian investors – Zarubezhneft as an operator and the Nenets Oil Company. Today, 1.6 million tons of oil per year is produced here.
The Bashneft-Polyus enterprise with the participation of Rosneft and LUKOIL operates at the Trebs-Titov block, the annual production is about 1.5 million tons of oil. In addition, in the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, LUKOIL is developing several medium-sized fields – Yuzhno-Khylchuyuskoye, Tedinskoye, Inzyreyskoye, Pashshorskoye, Toboyskoye, Myadseyskoye, Medynskoye and a number of others.
Since the Nenets Autonomous Okrug lacks rail and road links with the mainland, the unique oil transportation system created by LUKOIL, the Varandey Ice-Resistant Sea Terminal, is of particular importance. The loading berth, located 22 km from the coast at a sea depth of 17 meters (shallow water did not allow the construction of this facility on the coast), has a throughput capacity of 12 million tons of oil per year and operates year-round. Oil is transported by shuttle tankers to Murmansk for further export.
The terminal is a complex and large structure with a height of more than 50 meters and a total weight of more than 11,000 tons. It consists of two parts – a support base with a residential module and a rotary mooring and cargo device. In general, the Varandey oil export complex includes an inter-field oil pipeline with a length of about 160 km, an onshore tank farm with a capacity of 325 thousand cubic meters, support facilities, an auxiliary fleet, and a shift camp. The zero discharge facility is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s northernmost year-round operating oil terminal.
