Strategic Priorities and Challenges of the Russian Arctic Zone’ Oil and Gas Industry: The Nenets Autonomous District’ Case

Abstract

The article discusses the prospects for the development of the oil and gas sector in the Nenets Autonomous District by analyzing the federal and regional strategies as regards their tasks, possible challenges and risks in the implementation of strategies, and solutions offered. We compare the approaches to the Arctic shelf development taken by the Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Norway. In 2016, the future of the oil and gas sector in the NAO was actively associated with the development of the Arctic shelf. The draft Strategy 2018 openly recognizes that the fall in oil prices at the end of 2014 made the development of many projects in the oil sector simply unprofitable, leading to their ‘freezing’ for an indefinite period – and first of all, it affected projects in the Russian Arctic. However, it seems that this particular period of ‘freezing’ should be used to gradually increase Russian potential in working with Arctic hydrocarbon deposits. Two fundamentally significant elements of such potential are still absent at the level of problem statement in strategic documents. These, in our opinion, include the development of Russian own technologies suitable for efficient hydrocarbon production and related operations in extreme Arctic conditions (including maximum automation and robotization of the most complex and dangerous operations, the development of technologies for reducing environmental risks, etc.), as well as the preparation of a sufficient number of qualified trained personnel able to use these technologies effectively

Keywords

• oil
• oil production
• Arctic zone of Russia
• Arctic shelf
• shelf fields
• development strategies
• Nenets Autonomous Okrug
• Energy Strategy of Russia