Sabetta, Russia--Spread across the frozen whiteness of the Russian Arctic, the ambitious $27 billion Yamal gas megaproject aims to defy both the extreme temperatures and the Ukraine crisis impacting its funding.
Some 2,500 kilometres (1,600 miles) northeast of Moscow, the Yamal site -- a joint venture by Russia's Novatek, France's Total and China's CNPC -- is eventually meant be one of the world's biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects and ship deliveries to both Asia and Europe.
But not long ago the area drew only a handful of geologists and explorers whose neighbours in the virgin territory were polar bears and foxes.
"There was nothing. Just tundra," said Dmitry Fonin, a veteran of industrial projects in the Russian north who is at the helm of construction of Yamal LNG.
Over two years later development is in full gear and around 9,000 workers are toiling away in often fiercely inhospitable conditions to launch the massive facility by 2017 that aims to produce some 16.5 million tonnes of LNG per year.
"It's rather warm now, -10 degrees (Celsius, 14 Fahrenheit)," Ruslan Mikhailov, who captains an icebreaker tasked with keeping the waters around the port navigable, told journalists during a recent press trip.
"The average here in the winter is -30 and it goes as low as -56."
AFP
