Having nine time zones, Russia begins its presidential elections in Chukotka, Yakutia, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka.
FORBES: While Moscow Sleeps, the Far East has Begun to Vote.
Sakhalin may soon offer all of Russia a foretaste of what large-scale oil investment can mean.
Gazprom won't mind all that much, he says, if the Sakhalin deal falls through.
Shell, for one, may want to make up for its Sakhalin-2 losses by taking control of Kashagan.
One attraction of the Sakhalin fields is their proximity to Asian markets: hence the strong Japanese interest.
Sakhalin Island, lying off the eastern coast of Siberia, is believed to hold 50 billion BOE of oil and gas.
Japan, the future recipient of most of the gas from Sakhalin, will now also find itself at Gazprom's mercy.
Sakhalin's main gripe is that almost all the Russian share of the revenues from energy deals goes to Moscow.
But in 1999, the most advanced of the consortia drilling for oil and gas off Sakhalin began producing it.
Shell has evidently decided that the threat of delays and obstruction was less palatable than cutting its Sakhalin stake.
PSAs, which also apply to Exxon's Sakhalin project and to a Siberian development led by Total, a French firm.
Sakhalin Energy's decision came following the presentation of research revealing how seismic work disrupts the lifecycle of the gray whale.
What will that mean for the salmon, the whales and the rest of Sakhalin's beautiful but fragile flora and fauna?
But the government's environmental worries, and anger over Sakhalin Energy's costs, seem to have something to do with Gazprom's bargaining.
The engineering group was working on the Sakhalin 2 project in eastern Russia, which Marathon had landed in the early 1990s.
The Sakhalin consortia say they will not feel entirely comfortable until parliament eliminates conflicts between production-sharing legislation and other Russian laws.
Rosneft is already pulling its weight, in partnership with foreign firms, exploring for deposits off Sakhalin island in the far east.
The most advanced of them is Sakhalin Energy Investment, which brings together Mitsui and Mitsubishi from Japan, America's Marathon, and the Anglo-Dutch Shell.
But among the top performers is Tyumen, with a per-capita GDP comparable to the United States, a level which Sakhalin is swiftly approaching.
In 1995, Russia's worst recorded earthquake killed 1, 989 people in the Far East oil-producing town of Neftegorsk, on the north of Sakhalin Island.
The suspension of seismic work by Sakhalin Energy, which is backed by Shell and Gasprom, might mean the whales can move in-shore, feed and breed.
The sea around northern Sakhalin, in which the project's offshore drilling rigs stand, freezes for half the year and is home to a rare whale.
Gazprom wanted to be involved: last year it agreed with Shell to swap a share in Sakhalin Energy for a stake in a Siberian field.
Three consortia are preparing to pump oil from fields off Sakhalin.
Months earlier he was thwarted when Moscow revoked ChevronTexaco's right to share in the production of the vast Sakhalin-3 field on the island north of Japan.
For example, in 2006, Russian environmental officials said that the owners of the huge Sakhalin-2 integrated oil and gas project had violated a number of environmental regulations.
The deal, expected to be signed in April, would involve drilling rights and oil refining in Siberia and possibly near the Caspian Sea and on Sakhalin Island.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: US-Soviet Joint Ventures: The Camel's Nose Under The Tent
In the Sakhalin-1 project, for example, Rosneft and ExxonMobil are among five owners in an oil and gas project off the east coast of Russia, north of Japan.
FORBES: What Is The Political Risk Of The ExxonMobil-Rosneft Deal In The Arctic?
Combine Shtokman and Sakhalin fields, and you get around 62 million tonnes of LNG, volumes that would go an enormous way to reinforcing Russian price preferences across the globe.
By 2020 HydroOGK plans to build the Tugurskaya and Pendzhinskaya tidal plants, each with capacity of as much as 10 gigawatts, in the Okhotsk Sea, close to Sakhalin Island.
FORBES: Russia Reportedly Planning to Build Tunnel Under Bering Strait
应用推荐