East Siberia and the Russian Far East region is the second most important oil and gas province in Russia after West Siberia. However, it still remains a potential petroleum frontier. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet geologists discovered many substantial oil and gas deposits in the region, but commercial development was not initiated. In a few cases, development activities have begun in Yakutiya and Sakhalin in recent years. Nevertheless, no significant progress has been achieved since Russia’s “independence” and transition to market economy, with the exception of development of the “Sakhalin-1” and “Sakhalin-2” projects.
Russia’s oil and gas condensate output totaled 560.2mn t in January-December 2019, or 11.25mn bl/d, according to data from the country’s energy ministry data, up from 555.8mn t (11.16mn bl/d) in 2018. December production totaled 47.63mn t (11.26mn bl/d), a 3.4pc month-on-month increase month, but a 1.7pc decline year-on-year. Growth came largely on the back of increased contributions from a number of greenfield projects operated by national oil champion Rosneft, says Vasilii Tanurkov, director at Moscow-based ratings group Acra. These included the Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye, Srednebotuobinskoye, Kuyumbinskoye and Taas-Yuryakh fields in eastern Siberia and Kondinskoye, Russkoye, and East-Mess

But, over 21,000 tons of diesel were leaked into the Arctic Ocean as officials were slow to respond. The incident marks one of the largest oil spills in Russian history, and experts say the area will need years to recover. Russian officials are scrambling to clean up an oil spill in a region in northern Siberia, after an oil leak that began at the end of May was found to have released over 21,000 tons of diesel into the Arctic Ocean.

Unusually high temperatures in recent years are warming the carbon-rich soil, releasing methane gas into the atmosphere that accelerates the pace of climate change further still, said Vasily Yablokov, head of Greenpeace Russia’s climate change division. Like those at Norilsk, a city of 180,000 located 300km north of the Arctic Circle, many of Russia’s richest deposits are located in isolated parts of Siberia. This requires companies to transport fuel to remote power stations and makes it significantly more difficult to launch clean-up operations. “There’s a lot of infrastructure in the Arctic, and it’s all under threat,” Mr Yablokov said. “These accidents will happen again if you combine all those factors.” The spill is the latest environmental disaster to beset Norilsk, whose first smelters were built by prisoners in Joseph Stalin’s Gulags. Norilsk is the world’s largest emitter of sulphur dioxide, a component of acid rain, and admitted in 2016 that iron slurry from its smelters had turned the Daldykan river blood red. Mr Morgunov said the disaster would probably force Russia to improve the safety of its industrial infrastructure in polar regions. “Business won’t like it, but it’s essential to save the Arctic,” he said.

Sergei Dyachenko, Norilsk’s chief operating officer, said that “abnormally mild temperatures could have caused permafrost thawing resulting in partial subsidence of the tank’s supports”. He denied that negligence could have contributed to the disaster. Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared a state of emergency in the region, during 2020, which is now faced with one of the largest oil spills in Russian history. Over 14,000 square meters were contaminated by the oil spill, while some progress has been made in cleaning the most-affected areas, Tass news agency reported. Experts said the affected area could take years to fully recover.

At the end of May, 2020, fuel leaked from the storage tank of a thermal power station near the industrial city of Norilsk, into the Siberian tundra. Most of the diesel ended up in the Ambarnaya River, which was turned red by the oil. However, there was no official response until days later. However, the Russian government considers the development of the significant hydrocarbon potential of the region to be essential according to objective criteria. The following factors predetermine geo-economic and geopolitical necessity of developing the energy sector of East Siberia and the Far East:

• During the transition period of Russian independence, economic ties between the European part of Russia and this remote region were in some measure disrupted, threatening Russia’s national security in general;
• Problems emerged with energy supplies from other regions of Russia to this area that is rich in its own undeveloped resources;
• Social and economic problems of this backward region were aggravated;
• The region’s co-operation (often illegal and damaging for Russia) with the neighboring countries of Northeast Asia grew stronger;
• Its population, scarce as it is, began to migrate to other regions of the country, thus threatening Russia’s demographic security;
• Major West Siberian fields are becoming increasingly mature; therefore, this negative trend calls for a timely development of a new petroleum province;
• Accelerating integration processes with the dynamically growing countries of the Asia Pacific Region (APR) is a strategic national economic priority for Russia.