On Monday President Putin launched in a videoconference mode the exploratory drilling of the northernmost Russian well Central Olginskaya-1. Oil reserves there are estimated at 9.5 billion tons, plus huge gas reserves. Grigory Vdovin will report about the world's first well at the bottom of the Laptev Sea. Getting to the Khara-Tumus Peninsula is not easy.

First, you need to take a plane to Krasnoyarsk or Norilsk, then, by local airlines, to the village of Khatanga, only then, the last 300 kilometers, by a helicopter. There is no accommodation, no civilization at all. Reindeer breeders with herds appear here only during the short northern summer. Surprising as it may be — a giant drilling rig and a supplying village appeared nearby. Everything was delivered by ships during the past navigation period. This is how the Laptev Sea looks like in April. Navigation will open only in July and will not last long, only until August. It’s under the waters of the Khatanga Bay that the drilling is conducted. Drillers can proudly say that they were at sea. The well is located 70 meters away from the coast, and the main idea is that it will be drilled at an angle of 5 kilometers down, under the very waters of the bay. This is an exploratory well, that means, the hydrocarbon resources from it will also be extracted, but with time.

Meanwhile, the main task is to understand what the mineral resources have in store. First, a vertical section is drilled, then drilling will be conducted with a set angle, and afterward, we will drill at a given zenith angle. The head of state personally instructed the head of Rosneft to the start the work. In the drilling area bad weather broke out just at that time. You look very good. Very handsome. Impressive. This is only the first well. A lot of work is ahead of us. I want to wish you good luck and hope for the success of this whole undertaking. Vladimir Vladimirovich, I ask you to give us a go for the drilling of the first exploratory well in the Eastern Arctic. Get started. Despite the bad weather, the drilling began. This is the first well of the deposit with a romantic name of Central Olginskaya-1, the first in the Eastern Arctic.

Since the drilling had begun, about 40 meters have already been gone through, and the scientific data is expected to be received by fall. The preparations for the start of the work took place during the most difficult and the longest period here, the winter. The temperature reached 40, 45 degrees below zero, and the wind was very strong, 18-20 meters per second. How does the machinery cope? The machinery, in general, worked well. And the people? People can manage.

In the offices and even in the dining room, there are instructions on how to behave when coming across a polar bear, although the hosts of the Arctic haven't been seen here yet. Now, they prefer to spend time on ice closer to the Northern Sea Route, and they will begin to appear on the coast closer to summer. Now, there is no connection. That's right, the 20th century. The extraction of the resources and even any talk about the mining of minerals in the Arctic is preceded by a huge amount of scientific work. The station is 16 km away from the drilling site and this research is conducted there.

Even the veteran of many expeditions of the Institute of the Arctic and Antarctic, dog Archie, who is well known among the polar explorers, was brought to the base. It feels quite comfortable on Khara-Tumus. We solve complex issues of interaction of the natural environment and human beings, because the ice is a carrier platform. At the same time, it absorbs all the information produced by human activity. We study ice as an environment for life. What is ice? It is the memory of the planet Earth and it displays all the processes that occur in the air and water environments. There are 24 people in the camp and 20 more in the field expedition on ice 80 kilometers away. The weather is getting worse. Scientists can be removed from the camp only by helicopter. A unique layer of scientific information about the area, which was almost unexplored before, is being collected.

According to some estimates, by 2050, the production on the Arctic shelf will account for up to one-third of all Russian oil. According to a large-scale research conducted here recently, we can say for sure that in the Arctic Rosneft plans to work long and efficiently. The expedition Khara-Summer-2016 allowed to conduct unique experiments. For the first time in Russia a technology was tested to change the trajectory of the drifting of large icebergs, and, as a result, an iceberg weighing more than one million tons was towed. As emphasized in Rosneft, the preservation of the unique Arctic ecosystem will be given the most serious attention.

One of the results already achieved, which the scientific community can use, is the restoration of the system of meteorological observations in the Arctic. However, as the polar explorers say, when someone comes to this region, even a large state company, it becomes an event, often greatly changing the life of an individual and the whole team. The Arctic is a kind of drug. If you came to the Arctic and worked a little there, you always want to come back.