Russia Ships First Arctic Oil, Fortifies Oil Defenses [View all]

[bananas]

Source: Environment News Service

Riding on his pride in the first export of Russian Arctic oil earlier this month, President Vladimir Putin has signed a law that allows oil and gas corporations to establish private armed security forces to defend their infrastructure, upping the ante for protestors.

On the same day, April 22, Earth Day, Putin also met with the Russian Security Council. There he said, “Oil and gas production facilities, loading terminals and pipelines should be reliably protected from terrorists and other potential threats. Nothing can be treated as trivia here.”

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On April 18, Gazprom loaded the first cargo of oil produced from the Prirazlomnoye field, presently the only Russian hydrocarbon development project on the Arctic shelf.

Demonstrating the importance of Arctic oil exports to Russia, President Putin was on hand and gave the command to start loading the first shipment of Arctic oil onto Sovkomflot’s specially designed ice-class tanker, the Mikhail Ulyanov.

The shipment is on its way to Russia’s first customer, the French company, Total, the international nonprofit organization Greenpeace revealed.

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Read more: http://ens-newswire.com/2014/04/29/russia-ships-first-arctic-oil-fortifies-oil-defenses/

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Mikhail Ulyanov oil tanker arrives at the Prirazlomnaya platform to load Russia’s first shipment of Arctic oil. April 2014 (Photo courtesy Gazprom Neft)