Post by Admin on Sept 29, 2019 20:44:23 GMT
President Vladimir Putin needs to go green quickly to stop the permafrost from melting, so that Russian oil and gas companies can keep pumping the hydrocarbons that are warming the planet and making the permafrost melt.
Even I’m struggling with the warped logic of that one, but it’s the conclusion I’ve reached from Russia’s sudden ratification of the Paris climate accord and from reading the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Until now, climate change has been seen as a “good thing” for Russia — at least in part. Warming waters have opened up the Northern Sea Route across the top of the country and made it practical, if not necessarily economic, to search for and exploit oil and gas resources beneath the Arctic seas. Who remembers the Shtokman gas project?
Yet the warming that is opening up the Arctic seas may be starting to have a less beneficial effect on the frozen landmass of northern Russia, the heartland of the country’s oil and gas development and production.
In Retreat
Areas of discontinuous permafrost could see a 50-75% drop in load bearing capacity by 2015-25 compared with 1965-75
“Permafrost is undergoing rapid change,” says the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate report adopted by the IPCC last week. The changes threaten the “structural stability and functional capacities” of oil industry infrastructure, the authors warn. The greatest risks occur in areas with high ground-ice content and frost-susceptible sediments. Russia’s Yamal Peninsula — home to two of Russia’s biggest new gas projects (Bovanenkovo and Yamal LNG) and the Novy Port oil development — fits that bill.
The problem is bigger than those three projects, though. Some “45% of the oil and natural gas production fields in the Russian Arctic are located in the highest hazard zone,” according to the IPCC report.
The top few meters of the permafrost, the so-called active layer, freezes and thaws as the seasons change, becoming unstable during warmer months. Developers account for this by making sure their foundations are deep enough to support their infrastructure: including roads, railways, houses, processing plants and pipelines. But climate change is causing that active layer to deepen, which means the ground loses its ability to support the things built upon it. The loss of bearing capacity is dramatic and it’s already well under way, as this chart shows:
That may not be such a big problem for Russia’s newest oil infrastructure, which was designed with climate change in mind. The processing trains and storage tanks at Yamal LNG sit atop 65,000 piles driven up to 28 meters into the permafrost. These are kept cold by a so-called “thermosyphon system” designed to ensure that the soil’s load-bearing capacity is maintained throughout the project’s life.
Yet these assumptions depend on the models used to predict the extent of warming and permafrost degradation. What if they’re overtaken by an unexpected climb in temperatures?
“Near-surface permafrost in the High Arctic and other very cold areas has warmed by more than 0.5°C since 2007–2009, and the layer of the ground that thaws in summer has deepened in most areas where permafrost is monitored,” according to the AMAP. Under a high emissions scenario, “the area of near-surface permafrost is projected to decrease by around 35%.”