One million tons from Prirazlomnaya

This year’s tenth shipment of oil from the Prirazlomnoye field in the Pechora Sea has left for Europe, owner Gazprom Neft’s website reads. 

“One million tons of oil – it’s not just a pretty number. It’s an important milestone which will become a starting point for the further development of this project,” General Director of Gazprom Neft Shelf Gennady Lyubin says.

“Through our day-to-day work we have shown the most important: production of hydrocarbons on the Arctic shelf can be safe. Increasing the pace of development of the deposit, we will continue to ensure that the project complies with the most stringent environmental and industrial safety standards.”

Prirazlomnoye is the world’s first project involving oil extraction on the Arctic shelf using a stationary platform. Production started in December 2013, and the first shipment of oil left in April 2014. 

Field reserves are estimated to about 72 million tons of oil and peak production of five million tons is planned for about 2020. 

The field platform received the world’s attention in September 2013, when two journalists and 28 activists from Greenpeace, later dubbed “the Arctic 30”, were arrested and imprisoned in Murmansk for over two months, following a protest against Arctic drilling.

Gazprom Neft uses two specially designed ice-breaking tankers to transport the oil from the Arctic – “Kirill Lavrov” and “Mikhail Ulyanov”.

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According to Gazprom Neft, oil spill preparedness around the Prirazlomnaya is of top standard. It includes emergency stand-by duty by two multi-functional icebreakers and a vessel with equipment for gathering up oil spills.