Word: sakhaliners
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Anton Chekhov once visited Sakhalin Island to report on the condition of its prisoners and left a tagline unlikely to be adopted by the tourist bureau - if there were one: "Now I have seen Sakhalin, which is hell." And this from an author famous for understatement. Exiled at the far eastern end of the Russian Federation, just north of Japan, Sakhalin Island was where imperial Russia once sent some of its most unfortunate convicts, on a journey that was usually one-way. In Soviet times it became a closed military base; site of the notorious shooting down of Korean...
...rugged island has the climate of the Pacific Northwest, but without the flannel charm: freezing cold in the winter and damp in the summer, it is more suitable for salmon than people. Yet, today, flights to Sakhalin book up weeks in advance. Prices in the capital city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk are outlandishly high - $18 for a whiskey - and visitors (who usually come voluntarily now, unlike in Chekhov's time) have their pick of nightspots every bit as over-the-top as those found in Moscow...
...Chekhov's hell become red-hot? The answer is oil, lots of it, along with enough natural gas to power Tokyo - which, actually, is where most of it will be going. Sakhalin Energy (SE), an international consortium led by Shell and the Russia's state-owned Gazprom, is spending $20 billion to mine the waters around Sakhalin; one executive says the island could eventually become as important to the industry as the Gulf of Mexico. SE is finishing a pair of underground 500-mile pipelines down the spine of the island that will deliver oil and natural...
...island's residents would agree. The energy projects have been raised environmental concerns over potential damage to the habitats of the endangered Western grey whale and the streams where salmon come to spawn. Dmitry Lisitsyn, an intense geologist who has emerged as the voice of Sakhalin's environmental community, also fears that the pipelines could rupture in the event of an earthquake - Sakhalin is seismically unstable -causing a catastrophic underground oil spill. "This project is too large for such a small island," he warns. (SE says that it has responded to environmental objections, including earthquake risks...
Medvedev now says publicly that Gazprom is also targeting the $12.8 billion Sakhalin I project, operated by an Exxon-led consortium. It fits perfectly with Russia's strategy to get more control of its energy assets. Exxon hasn't capitulated by any means, but it still might learn what Belarus and SE did: Gazprom always wins...