sheppard, lola and mason white - meltdown - thawing geographies in the arctic

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Sakhalin Orlan. Orlan is a 20-well concrete structure that serves as the offshore drilling and living quarter in the Chayvo oil field. Court

Exxon Nef tegas Limited.

Sheppard/White



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50,000

200,000

400,000

100,000

20,000

ARCTIC TRANSPORT ROUTES

LAND

ARCTIC SEA ICE, MINIMUM EXTENT

PROSPECTIVE GAS AND OIL RESERVES

ARCTIC POPULATION

REYKJAVIK

MURMANSK

APATITYTROMSO

ARKHANGELSK

NORILSK

ANCHORAGE

NOVY URENGOY

VORKUTA

SEVERODVINSK

Arctic population map by author through information provided by UNEP/GRID-Arendal



Meltdown:

Thawing Geographies

in the Arctic

Lola Sheppard

and Mason White

Because we are now consuming resources at more tha

twice the rate of their development and discovery, the

closely aligned phenomena of resource exploitation a

urban development are made even more complex. The

of twenty-first-century urbanism are often found in h

contested zones containing exploitable natural resou

or in the great wealth that has accrued to some small

resource-rich states.

Hydrocarbon resources, especially petroleum andnatural gas, and the threat of their depletion have pus

the economies and geographies of various regions into

overdrive. Infrastructural megaprojects, of fshoring, a

enclaves are some examples of the by-products of thi

exuberant global resource competition. With an estim

quarter of the world’s undiscovered energy resources

one of the world’s most dramatically changing climato

conditions, the Arctic region and its adjacent area is w

to an emergent frontier urbanism. What could be more

ing than a thawing landscape increasingly accessible

each successive year?

A chain of irreversible conditions is contributing to

unique forms of urbanism in the Arctic. The speed of chas proved worryingly faster than scientists have pred

The melting of polar ice has simultaneously spawned

ritorial land claims, threatened ecosystems, uncovere

hydrocarbon resources, intensified northern ports an

ies, and collapsed global trade navigation. In an ironic

the consumption of carbon fuels has caused a warm p

to reveal even more resources with which to fuel yet m

warming. Standing at the cusp of such dramatic clima

transformation, the Arctic is central to the predicted c

change below the 66° latitude, the trade in the northe

hemisphere, and some of the most complex urban infr

structural forms of our young twenty-first century.

Subterranean Claims: The Arctic Circle

As one of the last great land claims on earth, the Arcti

Circle is a contested space for territorial claims, strat

infrastructures, trade movements, and navigation acc

It is currently administered by the International Seabe

Authority, based, oddly enough, in Jamaica. Probably

the most opportunistic actions have been taken by the

Russians, who could claim as much as 40 percent of la

inside the Arctic Circle, depending on which method o

claim is executed.

On August 2, 2007, two Russian mini-submarines t

eled 4,200 meters below the North Pole seabed to pla

rust-proof titanium flag on what is arguably an extens

the Russian landform. Since 2001, the Russians have

trying to prove that what is called the Lomonosov Ridg

actually an underwater extension of Russian territory

Canada, the United States, Denmark, Norway, and Ru

vying for the resource-laden potential of the Arctic, th

race is on to establish official borders, new infrastruc

and specific resource locations. This has led to a serie

133

Sheppard/White



134

inevitably networked cities bound by the ambition to serve

as a hub for the development of this region.

Russian Resource Infrastructures

The development of significant gas fields in the Arctic sea

shelf off Russia has roused this former superpower from its

recent economic slumber. Gazprom, a state-controlled con-

glomerate, oversees 16 percent of the world’s gas reserves;the company is the biggest extractor of gas in the world, and

it ranks third behind Saudi Arabia and Iran in the oil and gas

reserves it controls. With almost 60 percent of the Russian

economy accounted for by the export of raw materials,

especially oil and gas, there has been an acceleration in

the emergence of new technologies and infrastructure. An

intricate network of highly specialized works of engineering

is being put in place. Existing cities are being transformed;

but, more than that, a contemporary urban form centered

on a constellation of extraction and processing infrastruc-

ture is being born. It is a city of tankers, platforms, ports,

and pipe networks. Widespread and quickly diffused, the

infrastructural city is like urban form in a gaseous state. Gasurbanism, like the state of matter, is without definite shape

and of relatively low density.

The Shtokman Gas Field

The port of Murmansk (population 335,000), the largest city

north of the Arctic Circle, sits on the Barents Sea, where

global climate change has raised temperatures enough

over recent decades to make previously inaccessible areas

thought to be resource fields now developable. One sig-

nificant gas field called Shtokman was discovered in the

Barents in 1988, 550 kilometers northeast of Murmansk,beyond helicopter range. Estimated to contain 3.7 trillion

cubic meters of reserves, the Shtokman Field has inspired

an innovative Arctic urbanism of a kind never seen before.

Perhaps like the extensible, networked structures imag-

ined by Japan’s Metabolists in the 1960s, Shtokman will

be an ever-evolving, self-extending organism of pipelines,

tankers, platforms, rigs, living quarters, and more. The

developers intend to extract the gas with the help of float-

ing, ice-resistant platforms connected to the sea bottom

with special templates, but which are also able to move

out of the way of approaching icebergs. Gazprom, which

owns 51 percent of the project, is constructing more than

3,000 kilometers of offshore and onshore pipelines, and haspromised that Shtokman will come on stream by 2010.

Port of Murmansk. The port of Murmansk has access into the hinterland through a sea road, which has a depth of about twenty to sixty

meters of water. Because of the warm Gulf Stream springs that flow here, the water does not freeze no matter what time of the year it is.

Courtesy of Alessio Re/TripShake.



135

Sheppard/White

A. ACCOMMODATION MODULE

B. TOPSIDE

C. INTERMEDIATE DECK

D. TECHNOLOGICAL MODULE

E. CAISSONA

B

C

D

E

MOLIKPAQ

120m WIDE

150 RESIDENCES

ORLAN

20 DRILLING WELLS

7.5 km DISTANCES

FLOATING PLATFORMSPAR PLATFORMTLP PLATFORM

LIQUEFIED NATURAL GAS TANKER

275m LONG

DOUBLE HULL

CRYOGENIC LINING

135,000 CUBIC METER CAPACITY

ICEBREAKER TANKER

CUTS THROUGH + 3m THICK ICE

DOUBLE HULL

FLOATING NUCLEAR POWER PLANT

YASTREB

ONSHORE

7km

11km*

GAS URBANISM - BARENTS SEA

INFRASTRUCTURE TYPOLOGY

* WORLD RECORD1. STEEL TENDON2. RISERS / WELLS3. PILE CONNECTION4. GAS PIPELINES5. HARD TANK6. SOFT TANK7. TUBULAR RISERS8. MOORING LINES9. COMMUNICATION UMBILICALS

1

2

8

5

6

8

8

77

3

4

44

Logistical technologies of petroleum industry

Barents Sea

MURMANSK

NORWAY

PRIRAZLOMNOYE

SHTOKMANSNOHVITA R C T I C C I R C L E

GOLIAT

BELOKAMENKA

VARANDEY

C O N T E S T E D

BARENTS SEA

SWEDEN

FINLAND

RUSSIA

ARKHANGELSK

SEVERODVINSK

ARCTIC NAVIGATION ROUTES

EXISTING PIPELINES

PROPOSED PIPELINES

GAS CONDENSATE FIELDS

GAS FIELDS

OIL FIELDS

PROSPECTIVE AREAS AND KNOWN RGAS URBANISM - BARENTS SEA - RESOURCE FIELDS



136

Murmansk is strategically ideal for the exploitation

of Siberian and Arctic fields because it remains ice-free

throughout winter in spite of its location. The por t is cur-

rently the region’s largest coal-exporting facility, but when

the Arctic shipping boom materializes, the city is expected

to grow rapidly into a new role as a major transport hub. In

February 2008, a special economic zone was established

around the port, and a new 25-million–tonne oil terminal

on the western shore of the Kola Bay is planned. This willlikely replace the massive Belokamenka supertanker,

which, converted into a floating oil terminal and anchored

in the port, currently serves as one of three offshore trans-

shipment facilities in the bay.

The efficient transportation and processing of the

Shtokman natural gas will be essential to the economic suc-

cess of the development, and Russia has created a complex

sea transport organization that includes an ice-breaking

fleet, cargo ships, hydrographic support for Arctic mariners,

a navigation-monitoring system, and of course, new Arctic

ports. These on- and offshore facilities and services allow

vessels to navigate the North Sea Route almost year-round

and under any hydro-meteorological conditions.

Sakhalin Fields

Another Russian frontier resource field that is experiencing

a boom is in the North Pacific, off Russia’s Siberian coast.

The island of Sakhalin, a former penal colony, is at the cen-

ter of this new development. The oil and gas reserves lying

off its shores are expected to yield 14 billion barrels (2.2

cubic kilometers) of oil and 96 trillion cubic feet (2,700 cubic

kilometers) of gas. The fields are named Sakhalin I through

VI in the expected sequence of their phased development.

Sakhalin I began production in October 2005 and reached

full operating capacity in 2007.

At present, three platforms are at work in the region.

The Yastreb, the world’s most powerful land rig, anchors

the Chayvo well site on Sakhalin’s northeast coast. At over

twenty-two stories high, it is capable of drilling extra-long,

extended-reach wells to develop Chayvo field reservoirs

nearly 11 kilometers offshore. With the rig enclosed and

heated to handle extreme temperatures, Yastreb’s crews are

able to work even in midwinter conditions of thick ice cover.

Complementing Yastreb is Orlan, a twenty-well concrete

structure serving as the offshore drilling and living quarters

for Sakhalin I. There is also an onshore facility that pro-

cesses the oil and gas, which are then moved 637 kilometers

south to a distribution port in Prigorodnoye.

Prigorodnoye was a small village just 13 kilometers east

of the town of Korsakov that has now been entirely sub-

sumed into the business of Russia’s first foray into liquefied

natural gas (LNG) processing. LNG, with its greater density,

boasts increased efficiency for storage and transport.

Tankers access the processed goods from two loading arms

on an 805-meter jetty into Aniva Bay. At peak, Prigorodnoye

will service about 160 LNG carriers and 100 oil tankers each

year, or one every two days.

During Phase 1 of the Sakhalin field development in

1998, the Molikpaq offshore platform was installed. A

converted Canadian drilling rig that was first used in the

Beaufort Sea, the Molikpaq was towed across the Pacific

Ocean to Korea where it was upgraded for Sakhalin II.

Molikpaq was retrofitted with a steel spacer that allows it

to better handle the deep waters off Sakhalin. About 150people can live and work on Molikpaq as it is now, but two

new platforms, PA-B and LUN-A, will each accommodate

about 100 additional staff members. These rigs act as small

company islands, which are engineered with friction pendu-

lum anti-earthquake bearings, safety technology commonly

used in California. Once completed, Sakhalin II will be the

largest oil and gas field in the world.

Infrastructural Urbanism: New Utopias

The urbanisms fueled by the mining of hydrocarbon

resources and the shifting ecology of the Arctic are produc-

ing evolving city forms that recall unbuilt urban megaformprojects of the 1960s and 1970s by Constant, Superstudio,

and Yona Friedman, among others. These unbuilt mega-

form projects featured a scale and complexity similar to

that of the emerging infrastructural networks in the North.

With emergent cities fueled by a rush for resources and

geographic opportunism afforded by a cataclysmic shift in

climate, the accelerating infrastructural urbanism of the

Arctic suggests virgin geography as a zero condition. Perhaps

not so different than Constant’s iconic New Babylon, and

Superstudio’s Continuous Monument—but without any

explicit social agenda—the development of resource fields

and their supporting ports and trade routes in Russia’s

Sakhalin and Shtokman fields promote the possibility of a

techno-geographical utopia in a future urban Arctic.



137

Sheppard/White

Sakhalin Molikpaq platform. Currently, more than 150 people live and work on the platform.

Courtesy of Exxon Neftegas Limited.

sheppard, lola and mason white - meltdown - thawing geographies in the arctic

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