ロシア東部地域の石油開発と環境問題

東シベリア～太平洋原油パイプラインを中心に

抄録

Environmental problems accompanying oil development in Russia has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years especially in the field of construction of oil and gas pipeline. These problems have a considerable impact on the advance of oil and gas projects, a good example of which is the issue of Trans Sakhalin Pipeline in 2006, bringing, as a result, an essential change to the structure of the operator company. This paper focuses on the essence and the solution of environmental problems with oil and gas development in Russia, analyzing the construction of the ESPO pipeline.
In Russia, a series of laws have been issued and many administrative agencies have been set up to cope with environmental problems. The Federal Environmental, Industrial and Nuclear Supervision Service (Rostehnadzor) and the Federal Supervisory Natural Resources Management Service (Rosprirodnadzor) are taking charge of the environmental expertise of oil and gas projects including the construction of the ESPO pipeline as representatives of the federal government.
The construction of the ESPO pipeline is planned to be carried out by two phases. ESPO-1 is under construction and divided into four sections, while ESPO-2 is in designing process. Environmental problems occurred in both ESPO-1 and ESPO-2, including the construction method past Lena River and the design of the route passing Khabarovsk and Primorsky Krai. There are four groups of actors participating in resolving these problems: environmental administrative agencies, pipeline operator company, local governments and social environmental organizations.
Four conclusions are derived from the analysis on the environmental problems of the construction of the ESPO pipeline. Firstly, because oil and gas development and pipeline construction is going on in underdeveloped areas under the harsh natural conditions, many environmental problems do and will occur in the construction of the ESPO pipeline Secondly, the social consensus on environmental problems has not been achieved yet and the resolution of these problems, therefore, are still depending upon confrontation of political powers of different actor groups. Thirdly, a distribution of authority between environmental administrative agencies has not been explicitly defined. Fourthly, attracting international interest to the ESPO construction is a promising method to promote adequate resolution of environmental problems.