The workers searching for gas in the icy Russian Arctic – a photo essay
2022 – The Russian Arctic region, an area of 7,000 sq km atop the planet stretching from Finland to Alaska on which Moscow bureaucrats bestowed the name Zone of Absolute Discomfort, is wretched to live in, but just hospitable enough to allow for the extraction of resources trapped beneath it.
Gas extractors burn off excess condensate in the Russian Arctic tundra. The practice, called ‘flaring’, is harmful to the environment.
In recent decades, as scientists discover billions of tons of additional oil and gas trapped underneath the Arctic tundra, the Kremlin has commanded Russian energy companies to usurp these strategic resources.
Engineers and miners from around the world work short stints in the region, looking for natural wealth deposits several kilometres below the tundra. They come with expensive, sophisticated equipment and earn substantial sums for their hardship tours.
Engineers work surrounded by ice at a gas-drilling site in Novy Urengoy.
Workers connecting gas pipes during the night; and spraying steam over operating pipelines to stop them freezing on a cold morning when the temperature dropped to -42C.
An overview of Novy Urengoi, a city built by Gazprom in the 1980s to exploit some of the world’s largest gas fields.
The Ice City in Novy Urengoy.
When I was living in Moscow in 2009, the former Guardian journalist Tom Parfitt and I took a train towards the north pole for an adventure. The landscape grew desolate as the train headed towards darkness during the 40-hour journey; the trees shrank, and then disappeared all together when we reach the end of the line.
Unused to the polar cold, I was knocked over by a snow blizzard, my knees buckling under the weight of my backpack that I could not lift across the snow. I
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