"Economic Development and the Environment"
on the Sakhalin Offshore Oil and Gas Fields II

Copyright (C) 1999 by Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University.
All rights reserved


Environmental Consciousness in Sakhalin:
Background and Views on the Sakhalin Offshore
Oil-Gas Development

Tsuneo Akaha and Anna Vassilieva

  1. This study was made possible by a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education administered through Hokkaido University's Slavic Research Center. The grant supported our travel to Sakhalin in August 1998. We thank the ministry and the Slavic Research Center. We want to thank the Environmental Watch of Sakhalin and the Sociological Research Laboratory of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk State University for their assistance in conducting this survey. Thanks also go to Alina Spradley, a graduate assistant at the Center for East Asian Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, for her assistance in the translation of all survey responses. We also thank Philip Chou, Sarah Lane, and Kevin Orfall, also graduate assistants at the Center for East Asian Studies, for their assistance in survey data entry.
  2. Vasilii Kliuchevskii, Aphorisms: Historical Portraits, Sketches, Moscow: Mysl, 1993, pp. 25-26; quoted in Anna Vassilieva and Nikolai Sokov, Influence of Culture on Russian Negotiating Style, U.S. Institute of Peace-supported study, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California 1999, chapter 2.
  3. Vassilieva and Sokov, chapter 2.
  4. See, for example, Miwa Ito, "Roshia no ecology gyosei to kyokuto," Roshia Kenkyu, No. 24 (April 1997), pp. 60-77.
  5. Vladimir Ivanov, "Prospects for Russia's Energy Diplomacy in Northeast Asia," Global Economic Review (forthcoming). (Seoul, Korea), Summer 1999
  6. Regiony Rossii; Informatsionno-statisticheskii sbornik, vol. 1, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii, 1997, p. 280; cited in Judith Thornton, "Sakhalin Energy Projects: Their Governance and Prospects," paper presented at the annual conference of Asian Studies on the Pacific Coast, San Diego, California, June 17-20, 1999, p. 2.
  7. Regiony Rossii; Informatsionno-statisticheskii sbornik, vol. 2, Moscow: Goskomstat Rossii, 1997, pp. 194-195; cited in Thornton, "Sakhalin Energy Projects" p. 2.
  8. Thornton, "Sakhalin Energy Projects," p. 3.
  9. Sakhalin Energy is composed of Marathon, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Shell.
  10. Vladimir I. Ivanov, "Prospects for Russia's 'Energy Diplomacy' in Northeast Asia," paper presented at the conference on "A Vision for Northeast Asia: International Cooperation for Regional Security and Prosperity," organized by the Center for East Asian Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, Monterey, California, February 12-14, 1999, p. 23, note 25. See also, Tadashi Sugimoto and Kazuto Furuta, "Sakhalin Oil and Gas and Japan," in Vladimir I. Ivanov and Karla S. Smith, eds., Japan and Russia in Northeast Asia: Partners in the 21st Century, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1999, pp. 259-267.
  11. Thornton, "Sakhalin Energy Projects," pp. 11-12. The contradictory information was contained in Sakhalin Regional Administration, "Sakhalin Island Infrastructure Development Plan" prepared by Northern Economics, Anchorage, Alaska, 1998, pp. 3-9; cited in Thornton, p. 12.
  12. Ivanov, "Prospects for Russia's 'Energy Diplomacy'" p. 11.
  13. The estimated reserves of Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 are shown in the table below.
    Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 Estimated Reserves
      Oil
    (million tons)         		Gas
    (billion cubic meters)         		Condensed gas
    (million tons)
    Sakhalin-1
    Odoptu
    Arktun-Dagi
    Chaivo
    Sakhalin-2
    Piltun-Astokhskoe
    Lunskoe         		181
      42
    113
      26
      98
      90
        8     		663
    198
    292
    173
    567
    183
    384         		40
    11
    16
    13
    42
    10
    32
    Source: "Development of the Far Eastern Fuel and Energy Complex Development: Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 Projects Implementation," OAO Rosneft-Sakhalin Morneftegas, May 1997, p. 3.
  14. In December 1998 Mobil Oil was absorbed by Exxon for about $80 billion. (David Ignatius, "Corporate Suicide: Mobil's Only Option," The Japan Times, January 14, 1999, p. 18; Bruce Gilley, "Wake-Up Call," The The Far Eastern Economic Review, December 17, 1998, p. 56.)
  15. Mobil -Texaco would develop the Kirinskii field, Exxon the East Odoptu and Ayashky fields.
  16. These concerns were expressed by representatives of Environmental Watch of Sakhalin interviewed on August 24, 1998.
  17. Thornton , "Sakhalin Energy Projects," p. 7.
  18. The fishery industry is the largest producer and employer in Sakhalin and accounts for 39.6 percent of industrial output and 25 percent of employment.
  19. "Deviantnoe povedenie molodezhi," Sakhalin Information and Analytical Agency Publication, No. 3 (May 1995), p. 21.
  20. See Vassilieva and Sokov, chapter 2. For an extensive psychoanalytical discussion of the historical and cultural sources of "moral masochism" in Russia, see Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, The Slave Sole of Russia: Moral Masochism and the Cult of Suffering, New York: New York University Press, 1995.
  21. This observation is attributed to Yale Richmond, From Nyet to Da: Understanding the Russians, Revised and Updated Edition, Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press, 1966, p. 41; cited in Vassilieva and Sokov, chapter 2.
  22. In most remote towns and villages of Sakhalin, the residents have access to only one central channel as transmissions of local channels do not work.
  23. " Deviantnoe povedenie molodezhi," pp. 15-16.
  24. See Vassilieva and Sokov, chapter 2.
  25. George F. Kennan, Memoirs, 1925-1950, Boston: Little, Brown, 1967, pp. 528-529; quoted by Vassilieva and Sokov, chapter 2.
  26. See , for example, Tsuneo Akaha, Pavel A. Minakir, and Kunio Okada, "Economic Challenge in the Russian Far East," Tsuneo Akaha, ed., Politics and Economics in the Russian Far East: Changing Ties with Asia-Pacific, London: Routledge, 1997, pp. 61-67; Evgenii B. Kovrigin, "Problems of Resource Development in the Russian Far East," in Akaha ed., Politics and Economics in the Russian Far East, pp. 70-86.
  27. See , for example, Akaha, Minakir, and Okada, "Economic Challenge in the Russian Far East"; Tsuneo Akaha, "Environmental Challenge in the Russian Far East," in Akaha, ed., Politics and Economics in the Russian Far East, pp. 130-132.
  28. For a recent succinct discussion of Russian identity vis-a-vis Europe and Asia, see Pierre H. Hart, "The West," and Mark Bassin, "Asia," in Nicholas Rzhevskii, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 85-102 and pp. 57-84, respectively.
  29. Karen Horney, The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, New York: W.W. Norton, 1964, p. 228; quoted in Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, The Slave Soul of Russia, p. 93. The point is not that Sakhalin citizens are neurotic but that to the extent that they share the historically rooted tendency toward moral masochism, it is likely that many of them will view the ongoing oil and gas developments in their territory as a development beyond their control.