October 21 marks exactly ten years since the establishment of the Rosneft Arctic Research Center. During this time, the oil company organized over 30 expeditions along the entire coast of the Arctic Ocean. In cooperation with the leading scientific institutes of the country, work is underway in geology, ecology, hydrometeorology, and new technologies that are safe for the study and development of the Arctic are being developed.
The 2021 field season also turned out brightly. Last year, the oil company launched a new project to study the hard-to-reach and little-studied regions of the Arctic. In partnership with the nongovernmental development institute Innopraktika, the company has drilled stratigraphic wells in the north of the Kara Sea. In 2021, the expedition worked in an even more remote and difficult region – the Laptev Sea. Geological wells have never been drilled in the Eastern Arctic before.
“HIS 400 MILLION YEARS OLD”
“In this case, the core was raised from a depth of 200 meters in the Kara Sea. It is about 400 million years old, ”says Vladimir Lakeev, director of research and development at Innopraktika, showing a semicircular piece of rock. “To be clear, this is a couple of hundred years before the advent of dinosaurs.”
Note that the core traditionally serves as a source for determining the age (stratification), composition and formation conditions of the rocks of the Arctic shelf. The extracted samples will provide data on the geological structure and oil and gas potential of the region under study.
“Stratigraphy is the science of determining the depth of the age of the rocks that make up the earth's crust. This information may be of interest to a wide range of geologists and oilmen Alexander Pashali, Director of the Department of Scientific and Technological Development and Innovation of Rosneft. “The rock, which in one place comes out to the surface in the form of an island, in another place lies at some depth.”
In 2021, the only drilling vessel of its kind in Russia, the Bavenit, operated in the area of the Kotelny and New Siberia islands. Six stratigraphic wells were drilled, 415 m of core were taken. Especially for this expedition, “Bavenit” was equipped with the latest domestically produced equipment, which makes it possible to improve the accuracy and quality of stratigraphic drilling. For the first time in offshore conditions, a fiber-optic laser technology was tested to tie drilled wells to a geophysical section.
The extracted rock samples are transferred to the Innopraktika company for laboratory research, which is carried out on the basis of the Geological Faculty of Moscow State University. For almost a year now, specialists have been working with material from the previous expedition – the core of the Kara Sea. Scientists say that thanks to these studies, the country is on the verge of great scientific discoveries and a significant increase in information about the geological structure of the continental shelf.
It is planned that next year the work on stratigraphic drilling will continue in the Chukchi Sea, and the first studies will be carried out in deep water in the Arctic Ocean. Scientists expect to obtain new unique data on the geology of the Russian Arctic, which are extremely important not only for Rosneft, but, without exaggeration, for the entire world science.
“WINDOW INTO NATURE” FROM QUADROCOPTER
What is the Arctic associated with? First of all – with an extremely harsh climate. At the same time, experts say that more than 20 thousand species of plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms live in the Arctic, which have adapted to life in extremely low temperatures. Scientists call some of them bioindicators. We are talking about living organisms or communities, by the state of which one can judge the stability of ecosystems as a whole. Within the framework of the national project “Ecology”, Rosneft has undertaken to develop a program for the study, conservation and monitoring of polar bears, Atlantic walrus, wild reindeer and ivory gulls by 2023. In 2021, the second field season of this program was completed – four expeditions were carried out to the Arctic regions, thanks to which it was possible to obtain new data on the population of the studied species. Two expeditions were devoted to the study of the life of the polar bear.
“In the spring, we managed to carry out a lot of work on the Alexandra Land island of the Franz Josef Land archipelago. Research has been carried out on polar bears during the period when females emerge from their ancestral dens, – Head of the Arctic Research Center Department Artem Isachenko. – In August – September, on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the area of Cape Zhelaniya, observations were carried out during the ice-free period – the most difficult in the life of these animals. Field work in 2021 was carried out using the latest technologies – unique survey data from a quadrocopter were obtained about the moments of females leaving the birth den and feeding the offspring. ”
Thanks to the program of the oil company, for the first time, the Franz Josef Land archipelago, the Oran Islands (the territory of the Russian Arctic National Park) and the Victoria Islands were surveyed. A detailed mapping of known walrus rookeries has been carried out, new habitats of these animals have been described, and a one-time full-scale survey of walruses has been carried out using unmanned aerial vehicles. The obtained data on the population size is twice as high as the previous one – more than 7000 individuals. The largest concentration of walruses – more than 2,000 animals – was recorded on the island of Eva-Liv. A total of 40 islands were surveyed in two field seasons.
“In addition, the program for cleaning up the Arctic continues, which is being developed thanks to the Rosneft company,” noted the head of the expedition, leading engineer of the Institute of Ecology and Evolution named after V.I. A. N. Severtsov of the Russian Academy of Sciences Svetlana Artemieva.
New information obtained as a result of recent research will be processed and published. Including, within the series “Environmental atlases of the seas of Russia”, which are published jointly with the company “Innopraktika”. Based on the information received, Rosneft will develop recommendations for the study, monitoring and conservation of key species of animals in the Arctic.
