Workers hospitalized in Russian gas field brawl
Sopuruchi Onwuka
It appears everything about Russia is fighting its way into international stage where the country’s reputation as garrulous players is building from its invasion of Ukraine through a spark of militant insurrection that attempted a regime change.
This week it was a free for all fight in which workers at the Russia’s Kovykta gas field where the country’s energy giant, Gazprom, is desperate to raise infrastructure required for meet supply obligation to China, its remaining major customer.
The widespread brawl involving thousands of hard pressed Asian workers was reported to have started at the weekend and spread into the weak, leaving many in the migrant workforce from Central Asian states hospitalized.
The Kovykta gas field with estimated reserves of 2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves is operated by Gazprom which is under contract to supply China with 38 billion cubic meters per year after 2025.
The Russian energy company is reportedly putting the workers under intense pressure to build new infrastructure to meet the terms of a natural gas supply contract to China. And reports hold that some hundreds of people among the thousands of workers engaged in a massive fight which lasted for days from the weekend into early this week.
Some nine workers were hospitalized during the weekend before the fighting spread throughout the natural gas development complex in Eastern Siberia.
Thousands of shift workers from the poorer states are building infrastructure at the Kovykta field, which was inaugurated by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December last year, with Gazprom looking to rapidly ramp-up gas output to meet its commitments to China.
Gazprom is under contract to supply China with 38 billion cubic meters per year after 2025, with all that gas to come from Kovykta and Chayanda located 800 kilometers apart and linked to China by the Sila Sibiri 1 pipeline.
Only last year, Gazprom started producing gas from the Kovykta gas condensate field, one of the largest undeveloped natural gas fields in Eastern Russia with estimated reserves of 2 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.
Of Russia’s oil and gas giants, Gazprom has been feeling the bite of Western sanctions most keenly, based on its full-year profit reporting.
