This paper does not represent US Government views.
This in turn means that Russia’s economy is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts that affect the current or future operations of the petroleum sector. Many areas that are currently the focus of exploration and production activity will be more difficult to exploit. Pipeline and rail transportation systems that cross major rivers and permafrost will be subjected to unprecedented stresses and strains, many of which were not anticipated when initial design parameters were established. Critical new upstream development areas, such as the Yamal Peninsula, will be more complicated to reach by land and harder to develop in the face of thawing permafrost and shorter winter seasons.
The Russian petroleum industry has traditionally centered in West Siberia and the Volga region, with transportation links extending to European portions of Russia and then to western and central European markets. The Russian gas industry has centered on three super-giant fields in the Nadym-Pur-Taz region—the Urengoy, Yamburg, and Medvezh’ye fields. At present, in addition to thousands of producing oil and gas wells, Russia has roughly 50,000 kilometers of oil pipelines and roughly 150,000 kilometers of gas pipelines, most of which were constructed in the 1980s under Soviet rule. There are also scores of processing plants and refineries distributed across Russia’s massive territory.lxviii (See Figure 5 for a map of existing and planned pipelines and gas production regions.)
The core climate-related vulnerability facing oil and gas pipeline systems is that these systems were designed and built with the presumption of a stable climate. The thousands of river crossings did not provide margins of error to accommodate the increased water flow that will result from climate change by 2030. They were not constructed using horizontal directional drilling techniques that allow deeper and more secure passage under riverbeds. Underwater river crossings in several key producing and transit regions are thought to be particularly at risk—the upper and lower Volga and its tributaries in the regions of Nizhegorodskaya, Orenburg, Perm, Samara, Saratov, Ulyanovsk, Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Tyumen, Novosibirsk, and Sakhalin among others.lxix
In addition to climate-related risks for river crossings, oil and gas pipelines and other facilities are at risk in permafrost regions. In these areas, pipelines and other structures are typically constructed above ground to allow thermal insulation to avoid thawing the soil. In the period to 2030, however, these regions will experience deeper seasonal thawing, resulting in structural subsidence and weakened integrity of pipelines and other petroleum-industry installations. The permafrost zones are also exceptionally important for the future development of oil and especially gas production. Russian gas production has been the basis of not only Russian export earnings but also Russia’s controversial, growing politico-economic power vis-à-vis central and western European neighbors, as was demonstrated again in early 2009 during the Russian-Ukrainian gas crisis.
Maintaining Russian gas exports is therefore a matter of highest national priority. There has been a dramatic decline of production at the Urengoy, Yamburg, and Medvezh’ye fields that have been the core of Russian gas production since the end of the Soviet period.lxx New production is crucial for Gazprom to realize its production targets and satisfy both domestic requirements and export consumers in coming years.lxxi
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This paper does not represent US Government views.
