"Prirazlomnaya": tested by seals

It is difficult to surprise avid travelers with something. Especially people like Sergey Dolya. Sergey has seen and personally photographed, it seems, all the wonders of the world — recognized and unrecognized. But the employees of the Prirazlomnaya oil platform managed to delight the traveler with just one letter.

(4 photos in total)

Sergey Dolya tells:

Recently I received a letter from an employee of Prirazlomnaya, who accompanied me on a tour of the platform the year before last. Oilmen extracting the first Arctic oil in Russia witnessed a unique natural phenomenon: thousands of Greenland seals occupied the platform.

To be honest, I am surprised that so far none of the employees of Prirazlomnaya has started to run a thematic Instagram, as airline pilots or cosmonauts do. At least, my first Instagram photos about my arrival at Prirazlomnaya received 2.5 thousand likes. Of course, largely because I looked like Batman in a wetsuit.

But, most likely, my subscribers took their breath away from what previously seemed unreal. I was also struck by the scale of this technical facility itself — even on the mainland, it would inject a lot of adrenaline into the veins of a seasoned extreme. But in the ocean?! In the Arctic?! I don't know if I would have been more thrilled if I had conquered Jomolungma alone.

I have a psychological anchor now, like Pavlov's dog: I hear "Prirazlomnaya" — and spasms of excitement begin in my stomach, as before a parachute jump. A worker's letter from the platform caused such an effect. I looked at the colony of seals through the eyes of a man standing on the deck: under my feet, in the depths, units are working with precision, they are controlled by complex intellectual systems, like in a space MCC, and here is the icy power, which, apart from people, only these harmless (or are they great?) decided to disturb mammals.

Listen: the voice of the worker on the video is either insinuating, or prifigevshy from such proximity to the animal element. I don't know how I would have behaved, but I definitely wouldn't have taken a selfie — I was warned that this is not allowed everywhere (and you can easily mess up), and it's stupid to be an irritant for these hosts.

The men on the platform told me that there were cases when walruses swam up to the divers inspecting the caisson (the concrete base of the platform). I nodded, of course, but I was thinking: "Come on." "Here's a video for you!" — this "Prirazlomnaya" then read my thoughts and now answered with a letter from an oilman. It's good that the character of the platform turned out to be accommodating, but I could have been offended and then provided me with some kind of storm, and I would have hung waiting for a helicopter in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.

The most amazing thing about this story is that seals, like bowhead whales, are very sensitive to industrial noise and to everything related to the extraction of natural resources. Even if they drill on the mainland, hundreds of kilometers away from their parking lot, they leave their places, change migration routes. And then suddenly they took and collapsed right at the platform. Basking in the snow, drinking water, diving — in general, they feel at home. So the slogan asks: "Prirazlomnaya — tested by seals."

I'm looking at them now… Yes, zero discharge (this is when you can't even pour half—finished tea overboard, all the waste is taken to the mainland or pumped into the reservoir), yes, fish protection devices and a bird protection system, yes, full protection against oil leaks - they told me about all this -they showed me. But that's not why thousands of living creatures come to this machine. What attracts them? Maybe they feel how "Prirazlomnaya" is breathing, maybe something is telling them in their language. I wish I could understand their conversation. But I only hear the hum of the Arctic.

I spent several days on the platform, before that, a rescue training from a sinking helicopter took place in St. Petersburg Makarovka, then for another couple of weeks my consciousness was not released by safety instructions (do not smoke, do not shoot with a flash, hold on to the railing when moving up stairs, etc.). It was almost 2 years ago. I received a letter, and as if on command, the words of the platform captain Sergey Viktorovich sounded in my head: "Instructions are given for life. Perform".

And how, with such rigor, is such a movement possible there? I was lifted on a cradle for a beautiful shot, they allowed me to fly around the platform by helicopter, showed the drilling process (damn, I saw oil drops in the laboratory that had been lying at a kilometer depth for millions of years), fed Arctic borscht — I thought this was the limit. No, the guys wrote here that football players from Zenit came to them and there was a football match on the platform. Googled it. I will watch a movie about it on NTV tomorrow — "Zenit" — "Prirazlomnaya". The first in the Arctic."

I decided to ask for the Prirazlomnaya again. Yes, I know for sure that I will see oil and discipline there. But maybe something else is more incredible than Dzyuba in Arctic football. After all, if the video was sent to me, then I'm in the team.