Monday, June 5, 2006
Digging for Black Gold in Siberia
|
|
The oil town of Gubkinsky in Russia sprang up 20 years ago in the middle of a west Siberian forest, attracting young workers to a hostile climate with the promise of high salaries and adventure.
 Aerial view of the Rosneft oil refinery plant
© AFP Delphine Thouvenot "I've been here for 20 years. We decided to move here with my husband, a doctor, because we were young. We wanted to be part of this movement of pioneers, do something with our lives," said Yamiliya Yusupova, 55, a nurse from the city of Ufa in Russia's Volga region.
Food used to be flown in by helicopters, tank-like vehicles forged new roads and inhabitants sometimes slept in their coats in unheated barracks amid normal winter temperatures of below minus 30 degrees Celsius.
Life is easier now in this town of 20,000 people some 200 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle, which was built to tap large oil and gas fields now controlled by the state-owned Rosneft group.
Boosted by local taxes paid by Rosneft, the town has just completed a new school and a church. Yusupova's hospital is filled with state-of-the-art equipment.
 View of the Rosneft oil refinery plant
© AFP Delphine Thouvenot The local daily, "Oil Worker of the Arctic Circle," funded by Rosneft and city authorities, is filled with government news and information about Rosneft projects.
A new generation has moved in and the average age here is now below 30 years old.
Yusupova's two sons have returned to the "big land," as Siberians call the rest of Russia, but other young people are coming, bucking a trend of depopulation in other parts of Siberia.
Mikhail Ulyanin, a 28-year-old graduate from Ufa's prestigious oil institute, said he came to Gubkinsky two years ago in search of "better material conditions."
Salaries are comparatively higher and Rosneft employees get more than 60 days of vacations a year as well as a free airline ticket every two years.
The local trade union, seen as close to the authorities, limits itself to organising events for Oil Workers Day in September.
"When I came here 15 years ago, there was nothing but cabbage and potatoes in the stores. And no meat," said Alexander Balashov, deputy head of the local Purneftegaz reserves, who like many here hails from the ex-Soviet republic of Ukraine.
 View outside Rosneft's offices
© AFP Delphine Thouvenot In the town's main square stands a monument to Gubkinsky's Soviet early days -- the town was founded on April 22, 1986 in honour of Lenin's birthday.
Now, Balashov said, "you can eat strawberries all year round." The small supermarket in the Magnat stocks a wide range of produce -- from fresh grapefruit to Italian coffee.
The town is still by any measure remote. The nearest airport is 300 kilometres (190 miles) away and the biggest settlement, Tyumen, is some 1,200 kilometres from here.
But Gubkinsky is trying to shrug off the isolation too.
Satellite dishes can be seen all over town, hanging from the windows of old wooden sheds and new apartment blocks put together by workers from Central Asia during the region's short summer.
 View and Post comment on this article
© 2005 AFP. All rights of reproduction and distribution reserved. All information displayed on this section (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse. |
