Kamchatka Exploration Camp

Hello Everyone!

Greetings from the still cold and frozen coastal plains of Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia. If you have no idea where that is, then I would suggest getting your atlas out and looking it up. Either that or run your finger on the globe across the water from Alaska until you hit land. That will most likely be the peninsula. I am located in an oil exploration camp about 50 kilometers inland from the west coast, about half way up up the peninsula.

I am here for one month on assignment with my company, to fill in for my two field managers while they rotate out to Hawaii. Some deal, huh? Except that they have been here for more than two months and only have five days apiece in paradise to get their visas renewed and get their ashes hauled. Then they get to come back here for several more weeks. I, on the other hand, get to leave for home at the end of the month via the very same Hawaii. I think I have the better end of the deal.

It is a remarkable experience. The exploration project is being operated by a joint venture of a russian company named Lukincholot from Petropavlovsk, and CEP International, a canadian oil development company based in Calgary. The project is funded by a subsidiary of the Korean National Oil Corporation and various other russian and canadian investors. They have been awarded (now) three mineral leases along the west coast of the peninsula to explore for oil, and apparently are having some success at it. My company is supplying camp management services for the project and has been involved for a couple years.

It has been one of the more unusual experiences of my life. Just getting here involved the longest single journey I have been on. I left Anchorage on April 2nd, flew to Seattle, switched from Alaska Airlines to Asiana Airlines, flew to Seoul, Korea, and spent the night at there at the Hyatt Regency. The next day I flew to Vladivostok and spent a night there. The day after that I flew to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and spent two nights there. Then I got on a mini-bus and drove 530 kilometers north (most of which was a dirt and gravel road), and wound my way through the mountains on a one-lane unimproved road to the very isolated village of Esso. Once there, I was dropped off at the local "restaurant" for a lunch or borscht and pirogis, then boarded a russian helicopter and flew another hour due west just clearing the mountains and dropping down into the hills until finally arriving at the camp on April 7th! That by itself would have been enough of an adventure for me, but that was just the beginning.

I will be here for a month while my guys rotate out of country to get their visas renewed. If they do not leave before their visas expire the russians will not let them leave the country. So my job is to fill in for them and run the camp facilities. The only difficulty is that I don't exactly speak russian. But that is what the translators are for, thankfully. So I am learning a few phrases and in general provide a source of amusement for the locals.

There are 12 women, 103 men, three dogs, and one cat in the camp. There are 12 men with a canadian drilling company, 2 americans (my guys), and the rest are russian nationals from the Kamchatka area. The russians are supplying the professional, technical, and labor personnel for the job.

I have published some more pictures of the camp at my Picasa web album. You can reach it by clicking here: http://picasaweb.google.com/YukonJed/KamchatkaRemoteCamp.

As I get more photos of interest and time I will update this further. Stay warm and dry.

Jed