Compiled by Nikolai Maleshin with information provided by Elena Surovikina and Gary Cook.
This past June foreign oil companies forming the joint consortium, Sakhalin Energy Ltd., celebrated the official commencement of oil drilling on the shelf off Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. Their festivities, however, were somewhat dampened by a protest organized by Greenpeace Russia and Sakhalin Environmental Watch. The groups' opposition is summarized by their slogan, "the first oil means the last fish."
The Sea of Okhotsk is one of Russia's most biologically diverse and productive marine ecoregions. Economically, the Sea of Okhotsk is a critical resource for Russia, supporting approximately 70 percent of the nation's marine products, including a high percentage those intended for export such as crab and echinoderms. From January to May 1999, the export of these species generated $80 million for Russia. (The estimated worth of illegally exported marine products is an astounding $300 million). In comparison, Sakhalin's oil export revenues during this same period reached a modest $50 million. While the price of oil is continuing to drop, the price for marine products rose 29.4 percent during the first half of 1999.
Oil development now poses a grave threats to the marine region and all of its valuable living resources. Alarming signs of things to come were seen this past spring when mass numbers of Pacific herring (Culpea pallasi) washed ashore in the Piltunsky Gulf , just 16 km inshore from the Molikpak oil drilling platform. The official explanation of the massive fish death was DDT poisoning. However, analyses conducted by two independent laboratories in different countries revealed no traces of DDT in the fish. The tests did identify the presence of oil in the fish, pointing to oil extraction ativities as a culprit in the fish mortality.
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