Where does our oil come from?
Florian Stammler
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
The focus of Russian gas and oil production is situated in the Tjumen region in western Siberia. In 1997 162 million tonnes of oil was pumped out of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area. Bordering it in the north is the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area where 535 billion cubic metres of gas was extracted in 1996. The economies of both areeas compare with the best in Russia. In spite of the recent fall in oil prices, profits from oil and gas deposits in the region account for 40 per cent of all the income of the Russian state.
The Khanty, Mansi, and Nenets, the indigenous peoples of these areas, have been forced to engage in hard struggle for survival ever since industrialisation encroached upon these far-away regions. The proportion of these peoples of the total population has reduced to 1.4 per cent after oil production began in the region in the 1960s. To open up the area for industry, migrants were enticed from other areas of Russia. They were promised economic benefits as compensations for the harsh living conditions in the north.
Indeed, the climate is harsh in the tundra and taiga of western Siberia. It takes a lot of special effort by humans and animals to survive. The land is covered in snow and frost as long as nine months of the year. Within the short summer period only a thin layer of the ice melts and often becomes an inaccessible swamp that spreads on both sides of the Ob River.
The small nationalities of the Khanty and Nenets have adapted their traditional lifestyle to this environment. They engage in gathering, fishing, hunting and reindeer herding. In order not to exhaust the pastures, they change their places of living and grazing several times a year because the vegetation does not grow enough during the short summer to provide sufficient food for the whole year. Areas in the taiga are organised according to ancient customary law so that each clan is allotted specific areas for fishing, grazing and hunting. Particularly important are sacred places where gods of the forests and water reside or where the spirits of their ancestors abide.
Because of such links between humans and the land in the Khanty traditions, they suffer when their land is drilled or dynamited in order to determine the amount of oil in a deposit. They also suffer when hydrochloric acid is pumped into the ground in order to raise the oil pressure on the surface.
Numerous rivers, lakes and small waters are biologically dead. Fishermen of the indigenous peoples have to move further into upper reaches of small streams. However, also there the levels of water pollution are several times above the official maximum levels in Russia.
Due to the infrastructure demanded by oil production and the huge migration, the reindeer stocks in the Khanty-Mansi Area have practically become extinct. Officials in the region have been obliged to admit that hunting as a traditional source of indigenous livelihood has almost completely lost its significance. But they have also prevented the establishment of a biosphere reserve around the Yugan River. It would be of the type stipulated in a UNESCO agreement. 900 Khanty in the river region have managed to preserve their culture, and there is the refuge for the last wild reindeers.
Reindeer herding suffers enormously with industrialisation. Oil and gas exploitation demands 20,000 - 30,000 hectares (50,000 - 70,000 acres) of land every year. In addition oil spillage pollutes more and more areas. In 1996 over 7.5 million tonnes of oil, that is 5 per cent of the crude oil production, spilled over land mainly due to pipe leakage. Land thus polluted remains unusable for generations. The land is also polluted by sludge produced from drilling, although that is less harmful than oil. Oil companies have to pay fines for every recorded accident, but the damage caused by accidents is generally eight times more than the paid fines, even though the law demands that polluted land must be restored.
Great expectations were raised when the first representative organs of indigenous peoples in co-operation with environmental groups succeeded in the 1980s to prevent some big industrial projects. In the years between 1990 and 1993 a few important bills were passed in the Khanty-Mansi Area so that nowadays the land areas belonging to 454 families have been reserved as so-called "ancestor land". That kind of land guarantees the indigenous people an inherited right to use the land for free but it does not make them landowners. The state reserves the right to exploit the resources that lie underneath.
Active Khanty and Nenets who are conscious of their tradition have tried under very difficult conditions to resettle in taiga by buying reindeer and returning to the abodes of their ancestors. Some have formed local communities based on the traditional economy. They can function with limited administrative autonomy. With these efforts they are trying to revive the traditions of the ancestors even though they have become estranged from them for decades.
In order for such efforts to succeed they have to reach some compromise with the oil companies. Russia is shifting to a market economy by privatising the petroleum industry. Billions must be invested in the industry so that the biggest source of foreign currency of the Russian state would continue to gush out. For the companies coming from the west it is cheaper to open new fields that have more resources than the older ones rather than modernise the oil wells that are half-spent. Therefore the government approves all the time exploitation of new deposits in the region that are located on the land of indigenous peoples.
There are so-called economic agreements that have been signed by representatives of indigenous peoples and the oil companies, in order to avert conflicts. But even the as such insufficient economical and ecological obligations of the agreements are left unfulfilled by the oil companies. This leads to further hardening of attitudes.
In March 1998 a conference was organised in the regional capital of Hanty-Mansiisk that dealt with the conflict-ridden relations. A consensus was arrived at on some of the minimal general demands:
• The rights of indigenous peoples must be guaranteed to participate in the management of the oil deposits and to share in the profits accruing from them.
• A fair economic compensation must be paid for the damage caused to the sources of their livelihood.
• Indigenous peoples should take part in deciding on environmental protection
• A policy on damage assessment must be formulated on pipe leakage and other poisonous emissions
• An arbitration committee should be formed to solve land disputes.
• Agreement models should be created for the purpose of economic agreements.
• An organ to handle the basic rights of indigenous peoples should be established.
• The cultural heritage of indigenous peoples should be preserved and developed.
These demands have existed already for a long time. What is new is that they were approved in a conference that had representatives of the oil companies and the Russian government. Legally the decisions are proposals so that the representatives of indigenous peoples have to carry them through in the regional parliaments. In the issues there has not been earlier any real progress, which stems on the one hand from the fact that representatives of indigenous peoples did not do sufficient lobbying and on the other hand from the fact that this "elite of the indigenous peoples" could not help becoming estranged from the life in the taiga and tundra. The people concerned also discuss whether they feel that these representatives are actually representing them in the right away.
Representatives of western oil companies were not present in this conference. They would rather shift the responsibility on environment and human rights to Russian companies. For these companies German markets are very important: 52 per cent of the oil exports were directed towards Germany in 1996. Also German companies are furthering through their investments the exploitation of ever new production areas, and therefore are playing a great part in pulling the rug from under the life of indigenous peoples. Ruhrgas extended agreements with Gasprom worth over 12 billion US dollars from 1998 to 2020, and now owns 4 per cent of this largest Russian company. For the purpose of its business operations in Russia, Wintershall has formed Wingas Ltd. with Gasprom. Mannesman delivers gas and oil pipes with financial guarantees by the German Federal government. This operation has enabled Germany to import natural gas to the tune of US$ 55 billion from Russia within the last 25 years. At present a third of German natural gas comes from Russia, mainly from the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area. A fifth of German oil comes from Russia, mainly from the Khanty-Mansi Area.
Our behaviour has an influence on the destruction of these unique cultures through environmental catastrophes and human rights violations. Next time when we go to do purchases at a gas station perhaps we think of the fact that on one of the biggest sources of potable water on the globe there are people whose drinking water is covered with a film of oil and whose reindeer are dying on the sludge generated by the production of our petroleum.
Published in German in 1998 in Pogrom magazine number 201
Florian Stammler is preparing a dissertation on social anthropology in Max Planck Institute in Halle. In the years 1998 and 2000 he has made field research among the Khanty and Nenets reindeer herders in Siberia.