{"id":303,"date":"2007-07-15T06:34:42","date_gmt":"2007-07-15T02:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=303"},"modified":"2007-07-15T06:45:50","modified_gmt":"2007-07-15T02:45:50","slug":"summer-in-yuzhno-sakhalinsk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/303\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk"},"content":{"rendered":"

I apologise for not having updated you all with what has been going on in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and its environs over the last few weeks, but I’ve been flat out at work.<\/p>\n

During the winter it is difficult to get construction and maintenance work done on the oil and gas facilities in Russia, so during the summer everybody is running about like mad trying to get\u00a0everything done before the snow comes.\u00a0 In addition, last week the first part of the gigantic LNG facility at Prigorodnoye south of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk was commissioned<\/a>, using gas imported from an LNG tanker moored at the offload jetty.\u00a0 As the project is some way behind schedule, it was deemed a good idea to try to save time by commissioning some of the completed sections of the facility ahead of time.\u00a0 The pipeline which would supply the gas to the facility is not in place yet, so\u00a0in order to commission the various parts they needed to import it, which marked\u00a0the first time ever that Russia has imported LNG, by sending it backwards from the offloading jetty into the storage tanks (which are cooled to -160C under normal operating conditions).\u00a0 Exciting stuff, eh?\u00a0 Anyway, this period of LNG import\u00a0required me to spend a considerable amount of time hanging\u00a0round the site\u00a0in case things went wrong.\u00a0 As it turned out, it went\u00a0without a hitch, which is a major credit to the engineers\u00a0in Sakhalin Energy.<\/p>\n

The weather has\u00a0varied from week to week between brilliant sunshine with bright blue skies and dreary low grey cloud.\u00a0 Temperatures have got up to 32C, and\u00a0sometime in late May\/early June the entire south of the island turned deep green and vegetation, which appeared from nothing in a matter of days, shot up to form an underbrush three feet deep.\u00a0 Grass on Sakhalin grows in metres per second, but the local authorities have not yet heard of lawnmowers.\u00a0 Instead vegetation, inlcuding grass, is kept at bay using gangs of men with strimmers.\u00a0 With the vegetation came the mosquitos, which are horrible massive things which sip on blood like my wife sips on Mai-Thais around swimming pools.\u00a0 They leave horrible itchy bites which take a few days to go away.\u00a0 A week or so back I bought myself a mountain bike so I could join a group who regularly ride the excellent trails and tracks around the city.\u00a0 Unfortunately, along these trails and tracks the mosquitos attacked me with such ferocity it left me wondering what these things\u00a0eat when I’m not around.<\/p>\n

This evening I am taking a 14-hour overnight train to a town called Nogliki, which is halfway up the island.\u00a0 From there I have a 3-hour trip by 4WD to an Onshore Processing Facility (OPF), which is only the third most remote such facility in the region.\u00a0 The other two require a plane trip from Nogliki to Chayvo yet further north,\u00a0or a flight to Khabarovsk and a further 16-hours in a Kamaz truck.\u00a0 Sounds like I should convince my superiors to invest in a company helicopter.\u00a0 In any case, people tell me the train trip to Nogliki is entertaining, and judging by my previous adventures on Russian trains they are not making it up.\u00a0 I’m also expecting a whiff of nostalgia as I make my bed and buy my compulsory tea in a metal-framed glass from the babushka who terrorises the trains’ passengers into behaving.<\/p>\n

So for the next few days I’m out of town, and depending on the state of the internet connection at the OPF, I might not be posting until late\u00a0in the\u00a0week.\u00a0 So in the meantime, I’ll leave you with some pictures I’ve taken over the last month or so with my new Canon 30D and EF 24-105 L IS USM lense.\u00a0 There are a couple of promotional shots I took of the new terrace bar at the Pacific Plaza Hotel, where my wife is the sales and marketing manager.\u00a0 I’ve included them just for the hell of it.<\/p>\n

\"Children,<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Orthodox<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Russsia<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Mega<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fairground<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Fairground<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Trees<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Trees<\/a><\/p>\n

\"View<\/a><\/p>\n

\"View<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Lounge<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Lounge<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Shashliks,<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Summer<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Summer<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Low<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I apologise for not having updated you all with what has been going on in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and its environs over the last few weeks, but I’ve been flat out at work. During the winter it is difficult to get construction … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25,46],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}