Page 55 - Журнал Sozvezdye Review - «СОЗВЕЗДИЕ» #39

structure and the production capacity, as well as the de- and be able to generate intelligent designs. One example
creasing rates of recovery from many unique deposits. is Novatek’s High-Tonnage Offshore Engineering Center
in the village of Belokamenka near Murmansk, which is
Industrialization 2.0 currently under construction. Costing billions of rubles,
this Center is designed to manufacture offshore LNG
Globally, the pathways to new industrialization in- production and storage facilities and provide mainte-
volve intelligent, knowledge-intensive business services, nance service to hydrocarbon producing equipment.
with all routine operations outsourced. But, the indis- It is not uncommon that marine bases now neighbor
putable evidence of their expediency becomes question- restricted access military garrisons, once a simply un-
able when it comes to the Arctic. The essential difference thinkable thing. Novatek is planning to build its termi-
between Industrialization 1.0 and Industrialization 2.0 nal for Yamal LNG transshipment from ice-reinforced
lies in the nature of their targets: the former deployed gas carriers to conventional gas carriers (as a cheaper al-
its projects solely onshore and the latter is moving more ternative) in Ura Bay, which is home to Northern Fleet’s
offshore. We are witnessing the rise of the phenomenon submarine base.
of “corporate” and artificial islands: building up an arti- One word that Arctic Industrialization 1.0 was us-
ficial island for exploration drilling purposes at shallow ing excessively and at all times is “integrated”. The word
depths (land-sea zone) sounds a more effective alterna- that seems to gain firm foothold in Arctic Industrializa-
tive to floating drilling rigs. Similarly, there has been tion 2.0 is “localization”. Localization is understood as
a change in the perception of the Northern Sea Route. achieving economic effect by arranging the facilities for
Viewed by earlier explorers of the Arctic lands as a pure- mining, processing and logistics in clusters, i.e. within
ly transportation channel, NSR is now considered to be close proximity to each other.
also a vital means of the production process, allowing Earlier, the main effects were being achieved in the
access to the natural resources straight from its waters. northern and Arctic areas by the economies of scale, as
The phenomenon of new Arctic industrial devel- giant Soviet factories formed technologically linked pro-
opment is causing changes in the regulatory and le- duction complexes that occupied vast spaces. Today, the
gal provisions. To give one example, the lawyer team of increasing payoff is being achieved thanks to ultimate
Prirazlomnaya spent two years trying to legislate this compactness and self-sufficiency of new
platform into existence in the Russian Federation, per- development facilities, designed to miti-
sistently failing to fit the legal field during the entire pe- gate the effect of rise in ‘northern’ prices Технологический уклад
riod of construction. for transportation and energy.
The extractive industry’s decisive movement towards Arctic industrial development начала индустриализации
the Arctic shelf is changing the perception of seasonal- model traditionally employed stan- значительно различался
ity, which is now seen as a potentially positive factor, not dard technology solutions. Delivered между регионами российской
an unavoidable evil. A prime example is the Arctic Cas- to fields in Central Asia and the Arc-
cade, Novatek’s patent-covered liquefaction technology tic, those solutions would be adjust- Арктики и еще в большей
which uses the cold Arctic temperature to achieve high- ed to the site conditions by the local степени – между регионами
er levels of energy efficiency and cost saving. engineers. But, the Arctic field condi- российской и зарубежной
Arctic exploration has always depended on the Arc- tions are so diverse that one-size-fits-
tic ports. In this sense, the port of Arkhangelsk serves all approach is simply not an option Арктики
as Russia’s gateway to the outside world since the 16th here. Today’s level of technical ca- In its early years, the
century, while Murmansk had been Soviet Russia’s core pacity (with solution developers to be
logistical base for supplying all the coastal settlements found all over world, not just in one technological paradigm of
of the Russian Arctic. This, however, underlines the role country) allows developing and engi- industrialization varied greatly
of ports only as elements of the Arctic transport sys- neering custom one-off designs. These between regions within the
tem. I dare say that never before have the Arctic seaports new realities have caused the need for
been linked with the production activities so intensely a whole new institution – the institu- Russian Arctic and even more
as they are now. tion of pilot projects, testing grounds, so between the Arctic areas of
The core resources, gas and oil, would be transport- pilot sites, i.e. places for studying and Russia and those of foreign states
ed to Central Russia and Western Europe via overland testing of prototypes and building up
pipelines. Murmansk had been shipping its apatite con- of stocks of some specific items.
centrate to the south by rail. The southern railways have
been the preferred means for transportation of Vorku- Final remarks
ta coal. In other words, the competition between the
northern and southern routes was very often won by Arctic industrialization has its own unique char-
the southern route, which meant there was no need to acteristics that make it completely different from the
increase the capacity of the existing ports or build new industrialization that occurred in densely populated
ones. temperate zone of Europe. There, the emerging indus-
Things are different now. The discussion agenda of tries relied on agriculture and artisanal trades. In the
almost every new Arctic project has as its indispensable Arctic, the industrialization-born mining giants came
part construction of a new port or a dedicated terminal to maintain agriculture as a means of subsistence.
within the existing port. For example, Murmansk port While Europe’s industrialization path went from im-
now operates a dedicated terminal for transshipping port substitution to export-oriented engineering, ours
Taibass coal; Novaya Zemlya is to receive a seaport for goes from export-oriented mining to import substitu-
exporting lead-zinc ores from Pavlovskoye deposit; there tion in process engineering.
is a plan to build a non-freezing port in the village of In- In its classical form, industrialization involves
diga – the location for oil, coal and LNG terminals. In mass migrations to cities and their industries from
the new era of Arctic industrialization, the Arctic ports surrounding villages. Arctic mining projects source SOZVEZDYE #39
are breathing in unison with the Arctic mining indus- manpower from cities and urban localities to work on
try, constituting its integral part as never before. rotational schemes. While classical industrialization
All new Arctic mining projects require trouble-free assigns rural suburbs the role of support agents for наследие
performance of their manufacturing, supply, and intel- industrial towns, Arctic industrialization has its in-
lectual assets – same as they did in the Soviet times, dustries operating as circumjacent employers who are legacy
but now they operate as localized projects, not as fron- served by urban localities – just the other way round.
tal systems with areal support bases. The old hierarchy While classical industrialization generates its
is no more: There is now a network of supply bases and main economic effects within large industrial cen-
sales depots to keep the projects going. Performing on ters, Arctic industrialization gains important posi-
an equal basis as peers, these bases are expected to have tive effects from close, continuous interactions among 53
high standards for personnel training and retraining mining sites and their external suppliers.