Page 316 - Introduction to Petroleum Engineering

SAKHALIN‐2 PROJECT, SAKHALIN ISLAND, RUSSIA 305
helped Russia colonize Siberia. This gave Russia access to silver and gold in Siberia
and coal in Sakhalin Island.
Jurisdiction over Sakhalin Island was decided by the 1875 Treaty of Saint
Petersburg when Russia traded the northern Kurils to Japan in exchange for the rights
to Sakhalin Island. Hundreds of Ainu preferred Japanese rule and were allowed to
move to Hokkaido.
The Russian government needed people to work the mines. Convicts were
promised twenty acres of land once they finished their sentences in the mines at
Alexandrovsk, which is the northwest region of Sakhalin Island across from the
Amur River. Many lives were lost mining coal in the hostile environment, and
the coal on Sakhalin Island was inferior to coal from places like Newcastle
and Cardiff.
Freed prisoners were expected to raise all the food they would need, but the land
on most of Sakhalin Island required cultivation. The Russian government believed
that valleys would be better suited for farming than heavily forested mountains. The
Tym river valley in the northeast of Sakhalin was considered a promising locale for
farming. The Tym river valley extends to the Sea of Okhotsk and has marshy soil
during the summer. The summer is too short for oats to ripen, and only barley was
grown successfully. The subpolar climate and cold and fog from the Sea of Okhotsk
shortened the growing season. The discovery of oil and gas in the northeast provided
the only resource that could sustain a modern population.
Sakhalin Island continued to be a source of contention between Russia and Japan.
The Japanese took southern Sakhalin away from Russia in 1905 when they defeated
Russia in the Russo‐Japanese war. The Treaty of Portsmouth divided Sakhalin Island
into two regions at the fiftieth parallel. Sakhalin Island stopped being used as a penal
colony in 1906, partly because of resistance by Japan, and partly because it was not
considered an industrial or agricultural success.
The population of northern Sakhalin Island was less than ten thousand people in
the early 1900s. Immigration to Sakhalin Island became voluntary in 1906 when the
Russian Council of Ministers repealed penal servitude and exile in Sakhalin Island.
It became very difficult to get people to move to Sakhalin Island. The discovery of oil
and gas gave the region a natural resource with value.
Japanese firms began to show interest in Sakhalin Island around 1919, espe-
cially in the coal and oil deposits. The October Revolution in 1917 did not affect
Sakhalin Island until 1918. Soviets replaced Bolsheviks in seats of power by 1920.
The Soviets sought to prevent foreign economic supremacy by resisting free com-
petition of capital practiced by the Japanese, Americans, and British. Within a
month, a Japanese military detachment occupied Alexandrovsk and took control of
northern Sakhalin Island.
Japanese businessmen had a special interest in Sakhalin Island oil. Economic
assimilation began as soon as the Japanese military established control. Both the
Soviets and Americans protested the occupation, but northern Sakhalin Island
remained under Japanese rule for five years. Finally, in January 1925, Russia and
Japan signed a treaty that saw the Japanese army withdraw from northern Sakhalin
Island in exchange for petroleum concessions.