Far from civilisation in the endless tundra of the far north, an army of workers is toiling to fuel President Vladimir Putin’s vision of a new Russia. In summer a swarm of mosquitoes and gnats rises from the festering swamps, crawling down collars and up trouser legs. In winter the temperature plummets to -60°C.
”It gets to you, however tough you are,” said Igor Sbornov (34), senior engineer at the UKPG-1S gas processing plant north of Novy Urengoy, beyond the Arctic Circle. ”Even a stone shatters if you move it from fire to ice.”
The rigours of working in this wilderness 2 880km north-east of Moscow are amply rewarded by the world’s biggest natural gas supplier, Gazprom. Putin’s rush to build a mighty state on the back of Europe’s growing energy hunger has created an industrial elite of gazoviki — gas workers — which shows up the gaping divide between Russia’s haves and have-nots.
About 90% of Russian gas is found here in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous region. Highly paid and socially protected, the gazoviki who extract and refine it live like gods compared with most provincial Russians. By contrast, just kilometres from the spotless corridors of UKPG-1S, a group of Nenets reindeer herders pushes north through the tundra in search of fresh pastures, their ancestral land increasingly eroded by pipelines, railways and gas plants.
”The oil and gas sectors bring most money into the budget and their lobbies are very strong,” said Andrei Salinder, a Nenets intellectual campaigning for the herders’ rights in Salekhard. ”Who needs a few thousand native people? Our cry for help is a cry in the desert.”
Gazprom’s nannied workforce, however, is swept in a comforting Kremlin embrace. A sprawling, paternalistic state-owned company, Gazprom ensures cradle-to-grave care. It pays premiums for loyal service and high pensions, and lays on subsidised holidays for its 30 000 workers.
At UKPG-1S on the huge Zapolyarnoye gas field, engineers move between workshops along heated overhead walkways, specially designed so they can stay out of the winter cold.
”The weather may be extreme, but everything else here is European standard,” said Sbornov. At the purpose-built employees’ settlement nearby he is treated at a free medical centre, sees shows in a spacious concert hall and works out at a sports centre.
Many outposts are reached only by helicopter or all-terrain vehicle, and the gazoviki talk of ”returning to Earth” when they go on leave. But once they complete a one-month tour of duty at drilling and processing stations they are flown to their home cities for a month’s recuperation. ”We’re well looked after,” admitted Sergei Voloshanovsky (38), another engineer at UKPG-1S. He earns 36 000 roubles a month, four times the average Russian wage.
To the west at Kharvutinskoye, a new processing plant rises from the sucking mud of the tundra. Construction workers crawl over the giant structure, amid flashes of white light from welding lamps. ”I came for the cash mostly, but not only that,” said Yury Nikolayev (32), a worker from Chelyabinsk. ”I like Putin and we’re helping rebuild our country here. Russia has the richest natural resources in the world.”
Increasing extraction on the Yamal and Tazovsky peninsulas is one of Gazprom’s biggest strategic targets, according to Oleg Andreyev, general director of daughter company Yamburggazdobycha. That reassures the thousands of gas workers in the region who know they will be the last to go in the event of rumoured job cuts at Gazprom. Yet news of expansion spells doom for the Nenets people.
Yamal-Nenets is home to 6 000 of the last truly nomadic reindeer herders on the planet. Every year they migrate between the fringe of the forests known as taiga to their grazing lands on Russia’s northern fringe, by the Arctic Ocean.
Dressed in skins and living year-round in tepee-like tents called chooms, they cannot raise credit to develop their businesses because they have no official documents to show ownership of their herds. Their way of life is in jeopardy as Gazprom plans rapid expansion in the far north. ”Yamal is not only rich in gas,” said Dmitri Khorolya, head of a reindeer herders’ organisation in Salekhard. ”It’s rich in the tradition and custom of native peoples.”
Gazprom’s plans to recover the estimated 10,4-trillion cubic metres found on the Yamal peninsula are ”a very big threat” to the herders’ existence, he said. Construction of pipelines, railways and processing plants has already eroded the herders’ pastures, where deer feed on grass, moss and lichen. The gazoviki have been known to shoot reindeer for sport, while the dogs they bring from home run wild and prey on the animals. ”A wild dog is worse than any wolf,” said Petr Terentev, a herder.
Gazprom says it has poured millions of dollars into social support for the Nenets, including schools and communications equipment. But compensation paid by gas and oil companies for the land they use goes into local government coffers, not the pockets of individual herders whose grazing is destroyed.
Salinder said the worst insult was the gas workers’ contempt for local tradition. ”They don’t care about our holy places, our burial grounds,” he said. ”Imagine what it feels like when someone comes to the grave of your father and desecrates it.” — Â