The specificity of the natural, climatic and geological conditions of Russia lies in the fact that the richest regions are located in the arctic and subarctic regions.
About two thirds of the area is characterized by the presence of permafrost, which also covers a significant part of the Arctic sea waters, which complicates the development of hydrocarbon (HC) raw materials.
The distribution of hydrocarbon resources in the waters of the Russian Federation is extremely uneven: about 75 percent of the total resources and 86 percent of the resources of the northern seas are concentrated in the western Arctic – the Barents, Pechora and Kara Seas.
This largely depends on the regional geological features and the large area of these waters (only about 50 percent of the Arctic shelf of the Russian Federation) [1, 2, 3, 6].
All Arctic offshore deposits have also been discovered in these seas. None of the oil and gas wells have yet been drilled in the eastern arctic seas (Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi seas)
Oil and gas production in the Arctic has long been the basis for the economic development of inland regions, for example, Alaska, the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YaNAO), the Nenets Autonomous Okrug (NAO), reaching in the above two Russian regions, according to local administrative data, up to 83 and 98 percent, respectively. However, hydrocarbon resources on the Arctic shelf and, moreover, on the continental slope of the Arctic Ocean develop much more slowly than in most other regions of the World Ocean, which is mainly due to extremely difficult environmental conditions, ecological vulnerability and (to a lesser extent) from – for the presence of disputable water areas in the Circum Arctic region.
Oil and gas transportation systems in the Arctic include local and main oil and gas pipelines, transportation by rail and sea tanker fleet. The existence of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and a fleet of nuclear icebreakers allows the transport of hydrocarbon liquids (oil, gas condensate and liquefied gas) east and west to markets in Europe, the United States and the Pacific region. HC are exported by tankers from several terminals of the seaports of Murmansk, Vitino, Arkhangelsk and Varandey. In this case, the first three ports receive HC by rail, which limits traffic.
The share of exports of hydrocarbon liquids through the Arctic gates is low compared to total Russian exports by sea. This is only 6.3 percent in 2011 and 4.8 percent in 2012. In 2012, Arctic seaports exported 14.9 million tons of oil with gas condensate and petroleum products, which is 20 percent less than in 2011 due to changes in transportation routes.
Most of the hydrocarbons produced in Russia are transported to consumers via trunk pipeline networks. The figure below shows the location of Arctic onshore and offshore fields and trunk oil and gas pipelines (green and red). Also shown is the project gas pipeline from the Shtokman gas condensate field in the Barents Sea. In 2012, after lengthy preparatory work and negotiations on the start of investments in the Shtokman field development project, the partners – OAO Gazprom, Total SA and Statoil ASA – postponed the start of its development indefinitely.
The first gas production from Russian Arctic onshore fields began in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory at the Messoyakha field in 1969, from which the world’s northernmost gas pipeline, 671 km long, was built within two years to supply the cities of Norilsk and Norilsk. Nickel Gas plant. In 1972, gas production began in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug) at the Medvezhye field with further transportation to the European part of Russia and Europe. Thus, the Russian Arctic oil and gas transportation system began operating 5–8 years earlier than in Alaska, through the Trans-Alaska pipeline, built in 1977 to transport oil from the fields on the northern slope of Alaska (Prudhoe Bay area) to the port. Valdez in southern Alaska. Over four decades, more than 16 trillion m3 of gas has been produced and transported in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District to the west, almost half of which was produced outside the Arctic Circle. The total amount of produced and transported Arctic (north of the Arctic Circle) hydrocarbons in oil equivalent is 3.5 times greater than on the northern slope of Alaska.
On October 23, 2012, the transportation of gas from the unique reserves of the Bovanenkovskoye gas condensate field, owned by OAO Gazprom, began via the new Yamal-Ukhta gas pipeline with a diameter of 1,420 mm and a length of about 1,100 km. The maximum planned production level at this field will be 115–140 billion m3. During the construction of the pipeline, a complex intersection of the Baydaratskaya Bay was carried out, with the deepening of two 1,219 mm pipelines to the seabed to protect against damage caused by ice ridges and ground ice. In the future, this pipeline will connect other fields of the Yamal Peninsula, sections of the onshore transit area (Kharasavey, Kruzenshtern, etc.) and the adjacent shelf of the Kara Sea (Leningrad, Rusanov, etc.). Part of the gas from the fields of South Yamal (Kamennomysskoe-Morskoe,
In the north of Yamal, near the port of Sabetta, a large liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant is being built, including three production lines with a capacity of 5.5 million tons each (total 16.5 million tons) under the project of OJSC Yamal LNG. It is planned that from 2016–2018. LNG will be transported by gas tankers along the NSR to the west and east. It is assumed that it will be necessary to build 10 giant ice-class gas tankers (up to 300 m long) with a carrying capacity of 170 thousand cubic meters of LNG (about 77 thousand tons with an average density of 0.45 g / cm3). Considering that the capacity of the LNG plant in Sabetta is from 16.5 to 25 million tons (the latter is taking into account the planned contribution of Gazprom), it will take from 214 to 325 calls on gas tankers per year, which are mainly supposed to deliver LNG in the eastern direction along the NSR, so as not to provoke competition with gas from OAO Gazprom,
By 2030, the new gas producing region in Yamal should provide total annual gas production and shipment of up to 360 billion m3. Taking into account the operation of at least three more oil and gas LNG terminals in Varandey, Prirazlomnoye and Pechora, the safety of large-scale transportation of oil and gas in Arctic conditions requires the most thorough study, which is complicated by the lack of international experience and the termination of the service life of nuclear icebreakers (construction of a nuclear new generation icebreaker).
The Northern Sea Route (NSR) passes through the Russian Arctic and is the shortest navigation route linking European and Far Eastern Russia, as well as the countries of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. The NSR is of strategic importance for Russia as one of the most important export corridors that allow efficient transportation of huge volumes of cargo, mainly mineral raw materials. The distance between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok is 14 thousand km, which is 9 thousand km shorter than the Southern Sea Route (SSR) through the Suez Canal, and 16 thousand km shorter than the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa). The distance between Rotterdam and Yokohama is reduced by 2.2 times (10.7 and 23.8 thousand km). This clearly shows the effectiveness of using the NSR for the export of Russian hydrocarbons and other minerals.
The Swedish expedition of Niels Nordensold aboard the wooden whaling schooner Vega sailed through the entire Northern Sea Route for the first time during the two navigation seasons of 1878–1879. With one wintering. In 1932, the icebreaker “Alexander Sibiryakov” headed by Otto Schmidt made the first crossing of the Northern Sea Route in one voyage in two months and three days, but received a number of serious injuries. This year was officially recognized in Russia as the beginning of the NSR operation. In 1936, two fleet destroyers Voikov and Stalin sailed through the Northern Sea Route (from Leningrad – 2.06.36 to Vladivostok – 17.09.36). In 1987, freight traffic in various parts of the NSR reached a maximum of 6.6 million tons, after which in 1998 there was a significant decrease to 1.46 million tons, caused by the general economic crisis in Russia.
In 2011, the NSR was opened from June 29 to November 18. According to the lot of FSUE “Atom”, the total freight traffic reached 2.17 million tons [8] (according to the Murmansk Shipping Company – 3.3 million tons), most of the traffic was piloted by nuclear icebreakers. At the same time, 835 thousand tons of transit cargo was transported, and 34 ships passed along the entire NSR (according to other sources – 41 ships [7]). In 2012, cargo traffic increased significantly – up to 3.7 million tons according to preliminary data, including 1.26 million tons of transit cargo through the entire NSR [9], of which most of the cargo (about 71%) was liquid hydrocarbons. At the same time, 46 vessels passed through the NSR. For comparison: in 2011, the number of ships was 524 times less than that of ships that passed through the Suez Canal, and in the pre-crisis 2008, through the Suez Canal, channel and in the pre-crisis period more than 21 thousand ships passed. In 2008, more than 21 thousand ships passed through the Suez Canal. Despite the successes of the NSR in 2011–2012, transit cargo flows reached only 0.2–0.3% of this volume through the Suez Canal. A serious problem of the NSR is that most ships pass the transit route from east to west without cargo.
In 2011, a new route north of the Novo-Siberian Islands became available for piloting deep-water tankers with a draft of over 12 m (thus avoiding the shallow Sannikov Strait). The first tanker Perseverance was piloted by two icebreakers Yamal and Taimyr. The tanker is 228 m long; width 32 m; draft 12.4 m, and the tank capacity is 60 thousand tons of gas condensate. On August 23-30, the entire NSR passed in record time 7.5 days (average speed 14 knots) by the largest tanker of JSC Sovcomflot, Vladimir Tikhonov, with a carrying capacity of 162.4 thousand tons and 120.8 thousand tons. tons of gas condensate [8]. The dimensions of the tanker are as follows: length – 280 m, width – 50 m, draft – 13 m. In total, in 2011, along the route of 9 tankers, 686 thousand tons of gas condensate were sent by OJSC NOVATEK from the port of Vanino to South Korea, China and Thailand. For comparison, in 2001 the Yamal and Taimyr icebreakers piloted only three tankers, 60 thousand tons of gas condensate each.
In 2012, in addition to the transportation of oil, gas condensate and petroleum products, liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the amount of 134.5 thousand m3 was for the first time shipped along the NSR via the Ob gas tanker river, which followed from Melkoya (Hammerfest, Norway) to the port of Tobata (Japan).
Effective year-round operation of the NSR as an international transit corridor is impossible without the use of nuclear icebreakers, and only Russia has many years of experience in their construction and operation (the first nuclear icebreaker “Lenin” was built in 1954). Currently, FSUE Atomflot operates six nuclear-powered icebreakers: 50 Let Pobedy, Yamal, Russia, Sovetsky Soyuz, Taimyr and Vaygach, the first two of which will be commissioned after 2020 of the year. In 2013, construction began on a new universal double-sided project. an icebreaker with a capacity of up to 60 MW (LK-60Ya design), capable of cutting through long-term ice 2–3 m thick.
Pilotage of the Vladimir Tikhonov tanker along the Northern Sea Route in August 2011 Pilotage of the Vladimir Tikhonov tanker along the Northern Sea Route in August 2011
Since 1985, light sweet butter has been mined from a field in the Lower Triassic sands of the Peschanoozerskoye oil field (discovered in 1982), located in the east of Kolguev Island. In 2001, a maximum production of 125.4 thousand tons was reached. Since then, it has been steadily declining. As of the beginning of 2012, total production exceeded 1.9 million tonnes. Oil is accumulated in onshore oil storage facilities up to 60 thousand tons and exported to Rotterdam in summer and autumn by tankers with a deadweight of about 30 thousand tons.
Lukoil has built a unique stationary offshore ice-resistant unloading terminal (FOIROT) Varandey for exporting oil from the Timan-Pechora province as part of the Northern Territories project, which operates all year round and is the world’s northernmost oil terminal (69 ° 05 ‘). N) be entered in the Guinness Book of Records. One of the reasons for its construction is the fact that oil exports from this region to New York are three times shorter than from the Persian Gulf, which increases the competitiveness of the Northern Territories project. Russian organizations and OAO KB Korall from Sevastopol took part in the preparation of the FOIROT Varandey technical project, and the Russian metallurgical plant LUKOIL-Kaliningradmorneft in the Kaliningrad region produced it. In the summer of 2007, the FOIROT basement was transported by sea aboard a special barge AMT Trader (Netherlands) over a distance of 4,700 km across the Atlantic Ocean and the Barents Sea and installed in the Pechora Sea 22 km from the coast at a depth of 17.3 m. An octagonal steel terminal base having weight 9.8 thousand tons and a height of 35 m, was secured by 24 powerful piles driven at a depth of 40 m into the bottom rocks to prevent its displacement due to ice drift. The crane Stanislav Yudin installed an unloading bracket and a helipad with a total weight of 1.3 thousand tons in the basement of the terminal. It can rotate 360º using a special German-made bearing with a diameter of 7 m. The main deck of the terminal is located at a height of 18 m above sea level, and the total height of the structure below is 50 m. The total weight of the terminal is 11 thousand tons.
FOIROT Varandey is designed for year-round operation and has a capacity of 12.5 million tons of oil per year and a discharge rate of 8 thousand m3 per hour. Oil comes from onshore oil storage facilities with a volume of 325 thousand tons through two pipelines 22.6 km long and 820 mm in diameter (plugged to a depth of 1.5 m), which are used between the loading of oil tankers for processing oil with heating up to 60 ° C at shore to prevent it from freezing. Oil from the Yuzhno-Khylchuyu oil and gas condensate field is of the best quality; it contains almost half the sulfur (0.7 percent) and 2.1 percent lighter than the traditional Ural mixture, its density is 0.847 g / cm3 (35.5ºAPI) compared to 0.865 g / cm3 (32ºAPI) … During the development of the Yuzhno-Khylchuyu field, it was discovered that its recoverable reserves were overestimated too much (by 3.5 times [10]), which led to a sharp drop in oil production from almost 7 million tons in 2009 to 1.2 million tons per year. 2012 and underutilization of the Varandey terminal. In 2012, FOIROT Varandey shipped only 3.1 million tons of oil – 41.6 percent of its maximum shipment of 7.46 million tons in 2010 and 24.8 percent of its capacity. From 2013 we expect an increase in traffic through the terminal due to the transportation of oil from other fields in the NAO. 8 percent of its capacity. From 2013 we expect an increase in traffic through the terminal due to the transportation of oil from other fields in the NAO. 8 percent of its capacity. From 2013 we expect an increase in traffic through the terminal due to the transportation of oil from other fields in the NAO.
Oil is exported from the Varandey terminal by three special Arctic shuttle tankers of OAO Sovcomflot – Vasily Dinkov, Captain Gotsky and Timofey Guzhenko. Each of them has a length of 258 m, a draft of 14 m and a deadweight of 72.7 million tons (capacity 85.3 million m3 of oil) and was specially built in 2007-2009. Based on Aker Arctic technology at Samsung Heavy Industries’ shipyard in Korea. The oil is loaded through a throttle system, which receives up to 10 thousand m3 of oil per hour. These are the first tankers in the world capable of independently moving through ice up to 1.5 m without the support of an icebreaker. They can move back and forth as needed, turning two 10MW Azipod motors in half. Shuttle tankers deliver and ship oil to the largest Russian floating storage tanker “Belokamenka” (length – 340.5 m, width – 65 m, hull height – 31.5 m, deadweight – 360 thousand tons, anchored in the Kola Bay without ice, for further export. to Europe and North America by larger tankers with a deadweight of 150 thousand tons. When operating at full capacity, FOIROT requires about 180 tanker calls.
In 2010, by order of Gazprom Neft Shelf LLC, FSUE PO Sevmash completed the construction of the Prirazlomnaya offshore ice-resistant stationary platform (OIRFP) in Severodvinsk. In 2011, OIRFP was installed at the Prirazlomnoye oil field (OJSC Gazprom), located 60 km off the coast on the shelf of the Pechora Sea, covered with ice for most of the year (7–8 months). The air temperature reaches -50ºC, and the ice here is 1.6 m thick. Special requirements are imposed on the operating company to ensure environmental safety. In 2013, it is planned to develop the field as part of a project involving the drilling of about 40 multidirectional inclined wells with horizontal withdrawal (vertical depth – 2400 m), including 19 production and 16 injection wells. A separate well is designed to inject drilling waste into Triassic sands. Up to 95 percent of associated gas will be used for own needs.
After installation in the field, OIRFP Prirazlomnaya has a steel support cofferdam 126×126 m in size and a total operating weight of 506 thousand tons, including ballast. OIRFP has tanks for the accumulation and storage of up to 100 thousand m3 of oil exported by reinforced ice-class LU6 tankers Mikhail Ulyanov and Kirill Lavrov, built in 2008-2010 by the Russian Admiralty shipyards under the Aker Arctic project (AARC). Each tanker has a length of 257 m, a draft of 14 m and a deadweight of 70 thousand tons (tank capacity is 87 thousand m3). They are able to independently move along the stern 1.2 m forward and backward (two Azipod power plants). In addition, there are two thrusters that make it easier to maneuver and navigate ice fields.
With the maximum annual oil production in Prirazlomnoye of 6.5 million tons and the use of tankers with a deadweight of 70 thousand tons (capacity – about 87 thousand m3), at least 93 tanker calls will be required. The oil is planned to be transported to the existing export terminal in the Kola Bay or to the Pechenga terminal, which is planned to be built near the border with Norway. In addition, the American company Jácob Stolt Noelson is carefully considering a plan to build in 2016 a terminal with a capacity of about 20 million tons per year in ice-free Kirkenes for transshipment of oil from the Russian Arctic from small ice-class tankers to tankers with deadweight up to 300 thousand tons.
Years of experience in operating state-of-the-art installations in various industrial segments have shown that problems sometimes arise even with the most reliable of them. Along with the probable equipment failures, the human factor plays a negative role against which even the most advanced technologies and means cannot be protected. Two problems in the development of offshore oil and gas fields on the Russian shelf are the lack of qualified personnel, which has arisen recently and is constantly increasing (personnel shortage), as well as the increasing influence of the human factor on adverse events.
Based on international experience, work [4] shows that it is the transportation of hydrocarbons by tankers that poses the greatest threat to the ecosystem of the World Ocean and, in addition, to the Arctic waters. It is known that the volume of oil spills during transportation is 23–26 times higher than during offshore production [4]. The volume of oil transported exceeds 1.5 billion tons per year, which is about 40 percent of world production. According to the available international statistics of oil spills caused by tanker accidents, 84–88 percent of events are associated with human factors and difficult navigation conditions [4]. In addition, 27 percent of incidents are grounding and 49 percent are collisions with ships or shore-based facilities. These statistics are associated with much more favorable conditions for the carriage of tankers than in Arctic waters,
Proof of this is the fact that one of the largest disasters in the world occurred in 1989 off the southern coast of Alaska, in the adjacent waters of which navigation conditions are much more favorable than in the Arctic latitudes – more than 40 thousand tons. oil spilled from the tanker “Exxon Valdez” (“human factor”), which polluted more than 1,500 km of the coastline (the damage was estimated at $ 6-9 billion in 1982 prices). In 1990, following a series of major accidents and tanker disasters, the United States, by decision of President George W. Bush (Sr.), passed a new Oil Pollution Act (Oil Pollution Act 1990), which shut down many offshore zones. For several years, a national system for the prevention and response of emergency spills has been developed, including an integrated satellite communication and control network,
Russia is carrying out similar work, creating and improving a system for controlling the movement of ships, including from space, to reduce the human factor. Experts of the Russian Academy of Sciences took an active part in the substantiation and creation of the Arctic multipurpose space system (MPSS) for monitoring various situations in northern latitudes and worked on the creation of a remote (space) monitoring system. for natural and man-made HC spills in Russian waters. In accordance with the order of the Security Council of the Russian Federation dated March 17, 2010, MPSS Arktika, including two spacecraft for radar monitoring of ice conditions and the location of the vessel in real time, should be put into operation by 2015.
