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в ней фигурируют знакомые мне ребята.. :о)
A Boom From Oil Transforms a Russian Island
June 29, 2003
By JAMES BROOKE
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, Russia - "Sakhalin's 1st Escalator"
proclaimed The Sakhalin Times, one of two new newsweek
lies that fiercely compete for English-language readers here.
Atop the front page, a photograph captured the shiny new
symbol of affluence ferrying a shopper between floors at
the steel and glass Megapolis shopping center.
In czarist days, this island on Russia's eastern edge was
notorious as a place of political exile. In Soviet days, it
was notorious as the base for the jet fighter that 20 years
ago shot down a Korean passenger plane, KAL Flight 007.
Now, Sakhalin is about to win fame as the world's newest oil boom town.
Along a potholed and dusty street here, the Rubin Hotel
opened this spring, offering 34 suites at $200 a night. Two
oil companies have booked all the rooms through 2005.
Plans for this summer include the city's first Indian
restaurant, groundbreakings for two ski resorts and a
telephone company offering 100,000 cellphone lines.
Recently, the city gained a direct air link to Moscow, and
flights to Anchorage and Houston are planned.
The first flows of $22 billion in oil and gas investments -
the largest foreign investment in Russian history - are
starting to wash through here, part of a huge drive to turn
this long-isolated island of 578,000 people into the Kuwait
of northeastern Asia.
"What we will see here is what we saw in Aberdeen,"
predicted Jurgen Janzen, the Dutch operations
manager for the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company and one of
many veterans of Britain's North Sea boom who have
migrated here to tap the energy treasures below the Sea of
Okhotsk. "A town like this will grow tremendously."
Signs abound that this ugly duckling of the Russian
Far East is starting to molt. Flashy new plumage is
poking through the drab browns and grays of boxy apartment
blocks from the 1960's. Along once quiet boulevards with
names like Communist Prospect and Karl Marx Street,
traffic to Zima Hills, Sakhalin Energy's American-style
suburban housing compound, now snarls and slows, turning a
10-minute drive into a 30-minute stop-and-go commute.
Ramil A. Valitov, local director of Rosneft, a state energy
company that owns 15 gas stations on Sakhalin, said
gasoline consumption had increased seven times in
five years. The island is now second in cars per capita
in Russia after the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.
"It's a good problem to deal with too much money,"
Igor P. Farkhutdinov, governor of the Sakhalin region, said
in an interview. "We have been preparing for many years to
deal with the influx of money. We do not fear the large
investments."
After a decade of talk about an oil boom, the real
thing is shaking the city. "These are Moscow prices," Sergei
V. Vostorgov, editor of The Sakhalin Times, grumbled,
poking his finger at an advertisement asking $90,000 for an
apartment that featured "hot water during heating season
(October to June)." "Two years ago," he said, "that
apartment would have gone for $30,000."
Mr. Vostorgov, who also runs the Sakhalin Travel Group,
said the oil boom was ruining his foreign-oriented
tour business by filling hotel rooms and stealing his
guides.
"Hotels ask me to pay six months in advance," he
continued, echoing a widespread complaint. "The problem with
interpreters is that as soon as they get their
diplomas, they go to work for oil companies."
Aleksandr L. Dashevsky, who recently stopped working
with Mr. Vostorgov's travel business, said with a laugh
that guiding salmon-fishing expeditions was fun, but that
it did not bring in the big rubles.
"I am making more money as a consultant," he said.
"Interpreters are impossible to find. These
companies come in, they need a guy with a car, who can speak
English, who knows how to get licenses from the government. I am
charging $25 to $30 an hour. My time is limited."
Less than 100 miles north of Japan, the former
Soviet Union's cold war enemy, this city was off limits to
foreigners until 1990. Now, newspapers carry reports
of the opening of Sakhalin's first international school, a
visit by a British trade delegation and the opening of the
first branch office of a Japanese bank since Soviet troops
expelled Japan from the southern half of the
Sakhalin after World War II.
Some Sakhaliners say the oil boom is passing them
by, raising the cost of living - by 17 percent last year -
without providing benefits. Oil company workers earn
an average of $518 a month, compared with the
islandwide average of $244.
"Our newspapers don't write about closing
companies," said Natalya Gorbunova, an environmental worker for a
foreign oil company. "While there are new jobs, there are
also others closing."
Aleksandr Sorontin, an army driver who was drinking
beer in the same railroad bar car, complained of his $165 a
month pay, saying, "Very few people, only 10 percent, get
jobs on these oil projects."
To spread the oil money, the government encourages
labor-intensive construction projects like building
bridges, rebuilding ports and paving airstrips and
roads.
Technicians are drawing up plans to dig a five-mile
rail tunnel under the Tatar Strait to link Sakhalin with
the mainland. For now, passenger flights are Sakhalin's
link to the outside world.
Tatyana Ruchkina, a 22-year-old interpreter for
Exxon Mobil, increasingly dreads the trip home to
Vladivostok, the largest city in eastern Russia. When she arrived
here fresh from the university, her classmates teased her
about trading the San Francisco of Russia for "a rock
surrounded by fish and oil."
"Now people are learning that wages in Vladivostok
are much lower than here," she said. "At first it was
exciting, but now it is so tiresome. Everybody will ask me, `How
do you get a job? Can you help me get a position in
Sakhalin?' "
спасибо Рафаэлю Гимашеву и Юле Цой за статью.. :о)
в ней фигурируют знакомые мне ребята.. :о)
A Boom From Oil Transforms a Russian Island
June 29, 2003
By JAMES BROOKE
YUZHNO-SAKHALINSK, Russia - "Sakhalin's 1st Escalator"
proclaimed The Sakhalin Times, one of two new newsweek
lies that fiercely compete for English-language readers here.
Atop the front page, a photograph captured the shiny new
symbol of affluence ferrying a shopper between floors at
the steel and glass Megapolis shopping center.
In czarist days, this island on Russia's eastern edge was
notorious as a place of political exile. In Soviet days, it
was notorious as the base for the jet fighter that 20 years
ago shot down a Korean passenger plane, KAL Flight 007.
Now, Sakhalin is about to win fame as the world's newest oil boom town.
Along a potholed and dusty street here, the Rubin Hotel
opened this spring, offering 34 suites at $200 a night. Two
oil companies have booked all the rooms through 2005.
Plans for this summer include the city's first Indian
restaurant, groundbreakings for two ski resorts and a
telephone company offering 100,000 cellphone lines.
Recently, the city gained a direct air link to Moscow, and
flights to Anchorage and Houston are planned.
The first flows of $22 billion in oil and gas investments -
the largest foreign investment in Russian history - are
starting to wash through here, part of a huge drive to turn
this long-isolated island of 578,000 people into the Kuwait
of northeastern Asia.
"What we will see here is what we saw in Aberdeen,"
predicted Jurgen Janzen, the Dutch operations
manager for the Sakhalin Energy Investment Company and one of
many veterans of Britain's North Sea boom who have
migrated here to tap the energy treasures below the Sea of
Okhotsk. "A town like this will grow tremendously."
Signs abound that this ugly duckling of the Russian
Far East is starting to molt. Flashy new plumage is
poking through the drab browns and grays of boxy apartment
blocks from the 1960's. Along once quiet boulevards with
names like Communist Prospect and Karl Marx Street,
traffic to Zima Hills, Sakhalin Energy's American-style
suburban housing compound, now snarls and slows, turning a
10-minute drive into a 30-minute stop-and-go commute.
Ramil A. Valitov, local director of Rosneft, a state energy
company that owns 15 gas stations on Sakhalin, said
gasoline consumption had increased seven times in
five years. The island is now second in cars per capita
in Russia after the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.
"It's a good problem to deal with too much money,"
Igor P. Farkhutdinov, governor of the Sakhalin region, said
in an interview. "We have been preparing for many years to
deal with the influx of money. We do not fear the large
investments."
After a decade of talk about an oil boom, the real
thing is shaking the city. "These are Moscow prices," Sergei
V. Vostorgov, editor of The Sakhalin Times, grumbled,
poking his finger at an advertisement asking $90,000 for an
apartment that featured "hot water during heating season
(October to June)." "Two years ago," he said, "that
apartment would have gone for $30,000."
Mr. Vostorgov, who also runs the Sakhalin Travel Group,
said the oil boom was ruining his foreign-oriented
tour business by filling hotel rooms and stealing his
guides.
"Hotels ask me to pay six months in advance," he
continued, echoing a widespread complaint. "The problem with
interpreters is that as soon as they get their
diplomas, they go to work for oil companies."
Aleksandr L. Dashevsky, who recently stopped working
with Mr. Vostorgov's travel business, said with a laugh
that guiding salmon-fishing expeditions was fun, but that
it did not bring in the big rubles.
"I am making more money as a consultant," he said.
"Interpreters are impossible to find. These
companies come in, they need a guy with a car, who can speak
English, who knows how to get licenses from the government. I am
charging $25 to $30 an hour. My time is limited."
Less than 100 miles north of Japan, the former
Soviet Union's cold war enemy, this city was off limits to
foreigners until 1990. Now, newspapers carry reports
of the opening of Sakhalin's first international school, a
visit by a British trade delegation and the opening of the
first branch office of a Japanese bank since Soviet troops
expelled Japan from the southern half of the
Sakhalin after World War II.
Some Sakhaliners say the oil boom is passing them
by, raising the cost of living - by 17 percent last year -
without providing benefits. Oil company workers earn
an average of $518 a month, compared with the
islandwide average of $244.
"Our newspapers don't write about closing
companies," said Natalya Gorbunova, an environmental worker for a
foreign oil company. "While there are new jobs, there are
also others closing."
Aleksandr Sorontin, an army driver who was drinking
beer in the same railroad bar car, complained of his $165 a
month pay, saying, "Very few people, only 10 percent, get
jobs on these oil projects."
To spread the oil money, the government encourages
labor-intensive construction projects like building
bridges, rebuilding ports and paving airstrips and
roads.
Technicians are drawing up plans to dig a five-mile
rail tunnel under the Tatar Strait to link Sakhalin with
the mainland. For now, passenger flights are Sakhalin's
link to the outside world.
Tatyana Ruchkina, a 22-year-old interpreter for
Exxon Mobil, increasingly dreads the trip home to
Vladivostok, the largest city in eastern Russia. When she arrived
here fresh from the university, her classmates teased her
about trading the San Francisco of Russia for "a rock
surrounded by fish and oil."
"Now people are learning that wages in Vladivostok
are much lower than here," she said. "At first it was
exciting, but now it is so tiresome. Everybody will ask me, `How
do you get a job? Can you help me get a position in
Sakhalin?' "
спасибо Рафаэлю Гимашеву и Юле Цой за статью.. :о)
