Putin’s new grand oil project leaves Arctic lands in devastation
State oil company Rosneft says it is opening a new oil province on the far northern Taymyr Peninsula. Satellite images show unprecedented damage to thousands of square kilometres of vulnerable Arctic tundra.
"We are located on the Taymyr Peninsula, at the mouth of the Yenisey River, at the Sever Bay oil terminal on the shore of the Arctic Ocean. It is the world’s northernmost port."
Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin was reporting to the Kremlin from the terminal that serves as a main hub for the Vostok Oil project. The video shows Sechin in front of the tanker Valentin Pikul, which reportedly will bring the first shipment from Taymyr to buyers in China.
In the well-staged scenes, Sechin receives Putin’s official approval for the loading of the tanker, whereupon the dictator connects with a Rosneft worker in the control room, as well as with the ship’s captain. Both praise the excellence of the project, its infrastructure, and the oil carrier.
It is a typical Kremlin propaganda video meant to portray Putin as a strong, efficient, and successful ruler.
Meanwhile, actual facts and realities are twisted and fabricated, and information about the vast environmental damage inflicted on the vulnerable Arctic nature is effectively dodged.
According to Igor Sechin, Vostok Oil will deliver as much as 30 million tonnes of oil in the first half of 2027. By 2030, exports are due to reach 50 million tonnes, and some years later, 100 million tonnes.
"This is a new oil-producing region of global significance, with reserves of over 7 billion tonnes of high-quality, low-sulphur crude oil," Sechin told the dictator in the Kremlin.
Reportedly, more than 2,000 of a projected total of 12,000 wells have already been drilled.
Vostok Oil has been high on the agenda for the state oil company for years. On several occasions, Igor Sechin has been in the Kremlin to get Putin’s support. In February 2020, Sechin publicly presented the project to his long-time partner for the first time. "It will be the biggest project in the modern-day global oil industry," Sechin said at the time.
Six and a half years later, Rosneft has reportedly spent more than four trillion rubles (€39.7 billion) on its development.
Almost 800 km of pipelines have been built from the Vankor field in western Siberia, across the Yenisey River, and northwards on the Taymyr tundra to Sever Bay on the Kara Sea coast.
A part of the pipeline has been laid under the bed of the Yenisey River.
A major number of terminal mooring points have been built along the river, where ships carrying project construction materials have unloaded goods. Shipments have been made all year round, even during the dark and freezing cold winter.
Both the pipeline and the new port in Sever Bay are designed for handling 100 million tonnes of oil per year, Rosneft says.
For Putin, who has the Arctic among his top priority areas, Vostok Oil is seen as a triumphant achievement.
"I would like to congratulate you on this major, landmark event for the Arctic region, and indeed for the whole of Russia," he told Sechin in the ceremony. "A very important step has been taken in the implementation of the Vostok Oil project and the development of a new oil and gas province, which, without any exaggeration, is of global significance," he added.
It appears to be an undisputed fact that Vostok Oil has been built and that Rosneft is ready to start oil exports from the Taymyr Peninsula. Over the past years, hundreds of shipments have been made to the desolate coasts of the Yenisey Bay and Yenisey River. Photos shared by Rosneft show a port complex that comprises an oil-loading jetty, two cargo jetties, a harbour fleet jetty, and 14 storage tanks, each with a capacity of 30,000 tonnes.
Satellite images show a pipeline stretching from Sever Bay and hundreds of kilometres southwards.
Nevertheless, Vostok Oil appears to be embraced by lies and deceit.
When the Barents Observer interviewed Russian oil expert Mikhail Krutikhin in 2024, he called the project "a complete fake."
"It is a complete fake. The whole project is a fake," he told the Barents Observer at the time.
Krutikhin also described Rosneft as a "fake company" and argued that the state oil executives are driven by a corrupt scheme developed together with the Russian government.
In a column published after the recent ceremony in Taymyr, Krutikhin explains that Rosneft will never be able to produce and export the volumes described by Igor Sechin.
"To export 30 million tonnes of oil a year, 6–8 Aframax-class tankers, each with a capacity of between 80,000 and 120,000 barrels—in an Arctic-class configuration—would need to be loaded daily (!) at Sever Bay. There are not enough vessels of this type, let alone for Rosneft, but on the global market either," he writes in the column published in the Moscow Times.
Furthermore, Rosneft simply does not have sufficient resources in the region, Krutikhin argues. The regional oil resources are nowhere close to the seven billion tonnes outlined by Sechin.
Nevertheless, and regardless of the actual potential of Vostok Oil, a huge industrial advance has been made on the far northern Taymyr Peninsula. Thousands of square kilometres of vulnerable tundra are affected by the new pipeline and industrial sites.
Satellite images show a belt, up to 200–300 metres wide, with deep tracks from vehicles and industrial machinery stretching southwards from Sever Bay on the Kara Sea coast. On the tundra, this kind of damage can take many years to heal.
The new installations create hindrances for wildlife and the indigenous peoples and their reindeer flocks.
The new infrastructure is built on permafrost, which is becoming increasingly unstable due to global warming. An oil spill in the area would have serious consequences for the local environment.
Vostok Oil will ultimately also affect shipments on the Northern Sea Route. Rosneft intends to ship most of the oil eastwards to markets in Asia. So far, the company has only two tankers for the project, the Valentin Pikul and the Akademik Gubkin.
However, it cannot be excluded that Rosneft will ultimately use other tankers for the shipments, including ships that are not designed for sailing in sea ice.
Rosneft, like the Kremlin, is ready to take unprecedented risks—in the Arctic, as in other parts of the world.
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