Word: sakhalin
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...Russia have yet to come to terms on an agreement for Gazprom to sell natural gas from fields in western and eastern Siberia to the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC). In 2006 the two companies signed a memorandum of understanding to develop two pipelines, one that would link Sakhalin Island with northeast China and a second that would join the Siberian Kovykta gas field with China's northwestern Xinjiang region. Completion of that deal stalled on disagreements over several issues, including price. (See pictures of China's electronic-waste village...
...sectors in recent years have dented Western investors' faith in the country's rule of law. Caught up in a state effort to claw back control of lucrative assets, some were left badly scarred. In 2006 BP rival Royal Dutch Shell was forced to give up control of the Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project off Russia's eastern coast after the country's environmental regulators threatened to shut it down. Gazprom, Russia's state-owned energy company, duly took over the operation...
...They had us do an American-style integrity-management review of their pipeline, because they want to adopt the same standards that we have here," says Schutt. Green concerns are also a strong motivator to protect pipelines, as was the case with a recently completed project in Russian-owned Sakhalin Island, which "is a huge environmental reserve with a lot of beautiful wildlife," he says...
...Moscow keeps more than nine tenths of the 6% royalty that SE pays on oil and natural gas pumped from Sakhalin, leaving just crumbs for the islanders. Pensioners live off vegetables they grow themselves, and it's not uncommon to see bundled old women by the side of the street selling carrots, while new SUVs pass them by. And, despite all that natural gas, Sakhaliners still use coal to heat their homes - although the government may transform the island's infrastructure to use gas in the future. "People think Moscow uses the island to squeeze out all of our natural...
...Such complaints are unlikely to mean much in a Russia growing prosperous off its abundant oil and natural gas reserves. But while Moscow puts post-Soviet poverty behind it, the residents of Sakhalin are experiencing the energy boom in a manner familiar to many citizens of oil-rich nations. "I'm a native," says Vasili Plotnikov, a pensioner who owns a tiny country shack just a few miles from the massive LNG terminal. "I don't see any plus. I only see negatives." Maybe Chekhov's hell wasn't so bad, after...