Icy Frontier

Getting to the Sakhalin II site would test even the most good-natured traveler. The first leg of the journey is in Guinness World Records as the longest internal flight in the world. Assuming the airports are open—and that’s no certainty in a region with 40-below temperatures, snowstorms, typhoons, and cyclones—visitors endure a 9-hour flight from Moscow to the island’s capital, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. They then spend 14 hours on a train and 3 hours bumping along in a four-wheel-drive vehicle before finally stepping onto the project site.

The project “is a fine example of the Bechtel catchphrase, ‘This is no picnic,’” says Andrey Polunin, Bechtel’s project director. “It proves that Bechtel and its partners can deliver value anywhere in the world, no matter how difficult the local conditions.”

As a partner in BETS B.V. (Bechtel, Enka, and Technostroyexport), Bechtel is building an onshore oil and gas processing facility for the Sakhalin II oil and gas fields in the Sea of Okhotsk. When it’s complete later this year, it will process about 135,000 barrels per day of crude oil, along with 48 million cubic meters per day of dry gas feedstock, for two plants 600 kilometers south, which will produce 9.6 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas yearly. The plants will be Russia’s first entry into the hot LNG market.

For Russia, developer Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd. (Sakhalin Energy), and probable oil and gas customers Japan, Korea, and the United States, untapped fields around the island make the Sakhalin II project hugely promising. The challenges are on the same scale.

Sakhalin is remote and sparsely populated. As a result, little equipment is available locally, and obtaining personnel demands creative recruitment. In addition, local wildlife, which includes gray whales, Steller’s Sea Eagles, and brown bears, requires vigilant attention to environmental issues.

But the single biggest obstacle has been the weather. It alternates between two states—freezing in winter and wet during the thaw. (Writer Anton Chekhov once asked during a stay at Sakhalin, “Why is it so cold in this Siberia of yours?”)

Ice constantly drifts down from the nearby “ice kitchen,” with floes several kilometers long. In some winter months, ice entirely blankets the ocean’s surface, and ice-breaker ships are a common sight. Offshore platforms have specifically designed concrete legs, which can withstand battering by ice floes and earthquakes of 8.0 on the Richter scale.

Since the ice prevents deliveries of any heavy-lift items in the winter, sea delivery windows are tight. And since it takes three months to deliver a part, one missing piece of equipment can cause a whole season’s delay.

Bechtel’s partnership with Enka and Technostroyexport is the best example of the winning combination required for conditions such as those in Sakhalin. “Working in a JV environment on Sakhalin is like playing in the World Cup,” says Jack Sheehan, Bechtel’s project sponsor, “All the minor league players have gone home and it is just the tough and hungry left.” Despite the challenges, the project is 90 percent complete and on track for handover in late 2006.

An 1,800-person camp, including a canteen and indoor soccer field, was finished in July 2004. During the beach landings in the summers of 2004 and 2005, equipment was collected at a marshalling yard in South Korea, and a combined 4,128 tonnes was delivered by tugboat and ocean-going barges. The success of crane operations despite waves and wind is just one example of teamwork within the partnership. Bechtel’s rigging superintendent and Enka’s rigging engineer supervised the work, with assistance from Bechtel Equipment Operations on lift design.

In the spring and summer of 2005, the aboveground cable was pulled. The electrical team pulled more than 1.2 million meters of cable in six months, despite many days when work was out of the question due to low temperatures that make cable brittle. Temperature also constrained underground work, painting, and fireproofing. Beginning in the winter of 2005, the piping team checked pipes for leaks using a solution of glycol and water that stays liquid at low temperatures.

From October through May, 3 meters of snow can fall overnight, so snow-clearing becomes the most time-consuming activity. The project has had as many as 30 people clearing snow 24 hours a day with excavators, trucks, and mini bobcats, and then moving it to a dedicated storage area.

Spring and summer wreak their own havoc. The thaw creates slippery conditions; marine cyclones, with wind gusting more than 25 meters per second, can quickly halt operations. The last major blow was March 12, 2006. Hydrometeorology reports warned that the edge of a major cyclone was approaching. All outside work was suspended in advance. The impact was worse than expected, with severe blizzard conditions from 5 p.m. until dawn and zero visibility.

“The snowfall and drifting had to be seen to be believed,” says Deputy Project Manager Dick Cunningham. “The team spent days digging itself out and preparing safe access to work locations. You can imagine what it does to your material handling strategy. For example, you wake up in the morning and cannot find the road, let alone materials at the yard.”

The summer is not much better. Short sunny spells create clouds of mosquitoes that seem to penetrate any obstacle in their way. “Even in the summer you have to stay covered up, not against the weather but for protection against the mosquitoes,” says Gordon Scott, commercial and contracts manager.

The cold and isolation can affect morale, but “everyone is so busy looking after each other that they don’t have time to feel sorry for themselves,” says Sheehan. Indoor volleyball and table tennis, barbecues, and an annual “winter olympics” help keep spirits up.

Early this summer, the team finalized the system to provide power to offshore facilities. Drilling power will be supplied by a 100-megawatt plant in late 2006, with the main plant scheduled for completion around December 2006.

“As oil and gas deposits are discovered and developed in more and more difficult places on the planet, Bechtel’s Sakhalin experience will lead the way in frontier execution,” says Polunin.

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