International research crucial for Russia

Sarah Hurst

For Petroleum News

International cooperation is vital for meeting the environmental challenges of offshore Arctic development, Anatoly Zolotukhin said in a presentation at the University of Alaska Anchorage April 29. Zolotukhin, a professor at Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas, has worked for Norway’s StatoilHydro and is the author of 15 books on the petroleum industry.

Russia is sometimes left out in the cold when it comes to international projects, but some progress is being made, Zolotukhin said. For example, StatoilHydro has donated an oil sampling laboratory in the Murmansk region of Russia, and the two countries also have an oil spill contingency program in the same region. In the neighboring Arkhangelsk region, Norway and Russia are sharing their experience with fisheries and the oil industry and conducting coastal sensitivity studies and environmental monitoring. They are also doing research into the spill that occurred in Onega Bay in September 2003 when 50 tons of oil leaked out of a Russian tanker that collided with another tanker.

Many countries are doing Arctic projects at the Ny-Ålesund Research Park in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, and Russia has been invited to participate but so far has been reluctant to do so, Zolotukhin said. Knowledge and experience about developing the Arctic must be shared, he stressed, as there are so many problems still to be solved. In the Russian Arctic one of the major challenges is dealing with thick ice conditions in shallow waters. From the Pechora Sea to the Chukchi Sea the water depth varies from 10 meters (33 feet) to 40 meters (131 feet), which is considered shallow. Temperatures in the Chukchi Sea can plunge below minus 60 degrees Celsius.