Russia’s national oil company has begun construction on a massive project in the Arctic that officials say will produce 25 million tons of oil each year by 2024.
The new operation is possible only because the Arctic is now traversable in places and at times it previously wasn’t, due to sea ice levels plummeting as the planet warms. Hahahahha everything is fine!
The Barents Observer reported this week that construction ships have been spotted off the coast of the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia and have dropped off around 20,000 tons of construction materials to begin building what will be the Arctic’s biggest oil terminal. The project, called Vostok Oil, is owned by Rosneft, which is controlled by the Russian government but has a number of private investors (including BP, which, if you’ll recall, has big plans to be net zero by 2050). The CEO of Rosneft told Vladimir Putin that the company had also started drilling in a new license area this month as part of the project.
The proposed project is dauntingly huge. Rosneft said that it anticipates exporting 25 million tons of oil a year by 2024, 50 million tons by 2027, and 115 million tons by 2030. (The company plans to make 15 entirely new towns for the estimated 400,000 workers needed.)
The International Energy Agency, of course, said earlier this month that all new oil and gas production needs to stop by next year to keep the world on track to meet the targets set by the Paris Agreement. But screw that, apparently! There’s oil to be drilled in one of the most sensitive regions in the world!