Industrial development in the Yamal-Nenets Area

Bruce Forbes

Contents

Ulla Lehtinen: "Indigenous peoples and oil" events in Finland 1999 

Olli Tammilehto: A civilised world or a bloodsucker of the earth? 

Background information on oil 

Russia's oil production 

Florian Stammler: Where does our oil come from? 

Yeremei Aipin: Russia's oil industry and the development of rights of indigenous people 

Agrafena Sopochina: "We Live on what the earth carries on itself" 

Yuri Vella: Kogalym-Lor - the lake where a man died 

Bruce Forbes: Industrial development in the Yamal-Nenets Area

Lidia Okotetto: I no longer understand the tundra that has loved me 

Grigorii Anagurichi: A clash of civilisations at the ends of the world 

Charity Nenebari Ebeh: The Ogoni experience 

Magda Lanuza: Oil production in Central America 

Ecuador and oil 

Arturo Yumbai Iligama: The war against the poor 

Colombia, the U'wa and oil 

Roberto Afanador Cobaria: Oil is blood of the earth 

Workshop 1: The strategies of oil industry and the responses of indigenous peoples' movements 

Workshop 2: Networking of indigenous peoples threatened by oil and gas exploration 

Workshop 3: Northern Dimension

Communique of the participants in the seminar "Indigenous Peoples and Oil" 

Internet links

This massive region remains as the homeland of the Yamal Nenets, as well as many Khanty and a few Selkups, who graze their reindeers there. The basis for this indigenous but modern nomadic pastoralist economy is the seasonal exploitation of extensive tundra pastures.

There are indications that the vegetation is moderately to severely overgrazed in places. Furthermore, cumulative impacts from the railway and service roads are already apparent in southern Yamal.

Archaeological work has shown that Nenets and their predecessors have lived in the region for over 1,000 years, following wild reindeers and fishing in the myriad of lakes and rivers. In the Nenets' tongue, Yamal translates roughly as "the end of the earth" and it is an apt description. The Yamal Peninsula juts out several hundred kilometres into the Kara Sea just east of Novaya Zemlya and is underlain by frozen ground, or permafrost, at depths which range up to 300 metres in places.

The present economy, based on large-scale domestic reindeer breeding, developed over the last 150-200 years and is geared to follow a six-season rotational cycle. Slightly over half of the 9,000 indigenous people of the Yamalskii Raion (Yamal district) lead a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle and 46% of the tundra is utilized as pasture. Today three large state-farms (Yamalskii, Yarsalinskii and Panaevskii sovkhozy) direct the main economic activity of the indigenous peoples.

Petroleum development is a relative newcomer to the peninsula, with explorations begun in the late 1970's and the discovery of huge gas fields at Bovanenko and other sites in the early 1980's. Pressures for development were increasing rapidly even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, but took on new urgency as the need for hard currency became more acute after 1991. 

Despite these recent disruptions, as well as 70 years of Soviet institutional pressures, Nenets culture has remained remarkably intact, including their own language and many traditions. Reindeers continue to provide transport, clothing, shelter, food and even sewing thread for the nomadic population.

However, all is not well. By 1980, large portions of the Gydan and southern Yamal Peninsula were showing signs of overgrazing. Russian scientists estimate that the number of domestic reindeers on the Yamal Peninsula is already 1.5 to 2 times the optimum for the region.

They also note that ongoing oil and gas exploitation is constantly reducing the area of tundra suitable for pasture. Land managers from the okrug (autonomous area) also report serious overgrazing in some areas with the result that researchers at the Yamal agricultural station in Salekhard call for drastic cuts in the herds, especially on the peninsula. Unfortunately for the Nenets, under the enforced system of collectivisation the boundaries between the sovkhozy became rigid, reducing the flexibility that herders had used to cope with natural fluctuations in climate, vegetation and animal populations. 

Russian scientists have observed that plant cover is already completely destroyed over 450 km² (170 squaremiles) within oil and gas fields and 1,800 km² along the main pipelines. They estimate the total area of destroyed vegetation to be about 2,500 km². Based on the Tyumen oblast's2 present plans, they assert that the area of explored gas and oil fields will increase to 16,200 km² and the portion with completely destroyed vegetation will increase to 5,500 km². These figures do not include the further degradation that is expected to occur due to overgrazing by reindeers.

Construction has not yet begun on the pipelines that will be necessary to transport gas from the Yamal Peninsula to an existing pipeline network further south and west in the Barents region. Thus, the damage already sustained to the tundra ecosystems has been entirely from the exploration and infrastructure phases of petroleum development. 

In other words, although no gas will likely be flowing for many years, extensive impacts have already resulted from drill pad, road and railway construction, geological (seismic) surveys, off-road vehicle traffic and quarrying for gravel and sand to facilitate construction of each of these various platforms. 

Interviews with Nenets revealed a long list of changes in the land related either directly or indirectly to the development:

• Eutrophication, or excessive phosphorous loading of lakes near settlements.

• Blowing sand and dust have been a problem since 1985, near the railway/road corridor, especially for Moroshka (a.k.a. lakka, hilla or cloudberry, the valuable species of berry known as Rubus chamaemorus). People have got sick from eating the dusty berries and are now afraid to harvest them near the corridor.

• Reindeers are weaker and smaller in the vicinity of the corridor and cannot handle long-distance as well as previously.

• Where tracked vehicles have run on level ground the permafrost has melted out and the sites are now wet and boggy.

• The cover of reindeer lichens, which prefer dry ground, has already been noticeably decreased by off-road vehicles. Nenets fear that increasing dust and sand from roads and quarries may further reduce lichen cover.

• Fish populations are reduced in number in lakes and rivers and poaching of reindeers is increasing.

During my time on Yamal I have been able to corroborate most of these points either personally or through acquaintances. The dual impacts of intensive grazing and industrial development combine to create a scale of actual and potential surface disturbance not found anywhere else in the tundra eco-region.

As expected, not all Nenets I came across were ready to condemn the petroleum development. Many had found salaried labour with the crews. Schools and healthcare had also improved. For example, it was now possible for Nenets from even the most remote camps to be airlifted to a hospital in case of an emergency.

Outsiders who harbour a "romantic" view of the Arctic might find it lamentable to see the familiar patterns of colonisation appearing in an aboriginal group which has retained its strong cultural traditions and sense of self up until and indeed right through the 20th century. But who are we to make the decisions for them? 

As well, the Russian survey and maintenance crews who are accused of degrading the land have problems of their own. Salaries range from paltry and rare to non-existent and crews are often supplied with a few staples such as meat, flour, tea, tobacco and vodka.

Who can blame them for going after fresh fish? And who can even imagine - much less have access to or afford - things like special phosphate-free detergents, which might help protect the water quality? The mere concept is absurd given the context of what appears to most Russians to be a handful of herders scattered over thousands of square kilometres of pristine wilderness.

Among the migratory Nenets and most of the migrant Russian labourers and scientists the cultural gulf is so wide as to be a canyon. It is to be hoped that by the time the petroleum development goes ahead, enough is understood about the environmental implications to mitigate against the worst of them.

Many Nenets will certainly continue to live in the several towns that border the region. Perhaps just as many will continue to herd reindeers, though they may do so with the help of snowmobiles and other adopted technologies, as is done in the Saami region of northern Fennoscandia. Perhaps the number of reindeers will be reduced so as not to exceed the carrying capacity of the pastures.

In the best of all possible worlds, any future changes will be made according to the choices of the people themselves, for whom their culture is at stake, and not by the minions of remote governmental bureaucracies, petroleum companies or well-wishing scientists. 

Bruce Forbes is Senior Scientist in Environmental Science and Policy at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland. He has made several expeditions to the Yamal Peninsula.
 
 

1Gas condensates are those gases coming out of a deposit, which are heavier than natural gas proper or methane. These include propane, butane, isobutane and pentane. Gas condensates are extracted from methane already on gas fields. They are transported as liquified at high pressure by train or by boat - unlike natural gas proper which is transported in pipelines (editors's note). 

2The Russian province which includes the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area (editors note).