18-02-02 A Russian oil tanker will attempt to trek through fields of ice to ensure oil transports all year round, officials in Russia's Sakhalin island said. The 105,000-ton tanker Primorye, accompanied by two icebreakers, would try to reach the port of De Kastri, in an experiment aimed to determine if the route could be used in winter to transport oil produced in the Sakhalin-1 project.
"We are concerned about three things -- the complicated weather and ecological conditions, the region's fishing industry, and keeping our delivery schedule," the local administration's chief of sea resources development projects, Galina Pavlova, told.

The transporters needed to determine the routes with all possible speed as first oil wells were to be drilled in October this year, with oil production to begin in 2005. Some 2.3 bn barrels of oil and 485 mm cm of gas are expected to be extracted from Sakhalin's seabed in the framework of the Sakhalin-1 project.
Sakhalin oil is to be exported to Japan and could makeup about 6 % of Japan's total crude imports. Gas supplies would help to meet domestic demand in Russia's Far East region and also export to Asian markets.

Russia began tendering Sakhalin offshore leases to foreign consortia in the early 1990s to develop what is considered a possible strategic source of energy for the developing Asian countries.