There is a lot of oil off the coast of Sakhalin Island located in the Sea of Oshkosh, off the coast of Far East Russia and seven time zones from Moscow.
I almost went there once but got stuck in the ice in a not so remote part of Siberia. Everyone has heard how cold it is in Sibera. It's true. In fact, it is so cold, people tell jokes in November, but no one laughs until March - that is when the jokes start to thaw out.
On the most northern tip of Sakhalin there are platforms...or there will be platforms. Once in place they will deliver oil by pipeline to the southern most tip of the island some 500 miles away.
After that the oil will be loaded into tankers and the gas super cooled. That would be about one degree Celsius below its usual temperature.
And then..and then...it will be shipped off to the hungry economies of Japan, South Korea and China...and if there is any left over..to a terminal in Baja California, Mexico and on to the west coast of the US. And to think, CA has some just a few miles off shore.
The price tag for this project - somewhere around $30 billion.
Question: Could that money be spent developing alternatives to oil?
In other words, is it worth it?
What do you think?
Too bad you never made it to Sakhalin. There was a time where I was going there so often I actually rented an apartment. It is actually a great place, two or three months out of the year. It is booming and will continue to do so. It has so much oil nobody even knows how much. It's just too bad almost all of the profits go straight to the big-wigs in Moscow and very little of it stays on the island.
Posted by: China Law Blog | June 16, 2006 11:09 PM | Permalink to Comment