Inside the claustrophobic confines of a shipping container erected in the middle of an icy nowhere, a group of Russians wait out another Arctic storm. Anton bakes blinis. Andrei watches a horror movie for the umpteenth time. Alexei tries to craft a toothpaste holder from an empty tin can. Lisa the dog, who finds company among the 100 men in Camp No2, curls up farthest away from the drafty door.
The engineers gathered on this desolate patch of Russian tundra have been hired by a geo-exploration company to look for oil deep below the permafrost. I am waiting out the battering winds with them, to document the international race to secure Arctic resources.
I have made six trips over three years to the Russian Arctic, a 7,000-kilometre-long region stretching atop the planet from Finland to Alaska, upon which Moscow bureaucrats have bestowed the name “Zone of Absolute Discomfort”. The icy hinterland is wretched to live in, but just hospitable enough to allow for the extraction of billions of tonnes of resources trapped beneath the permafrost.
Here, three contrasting ways of life, representing three centuries of Russian history, simultaneously tap the Earth’s resources amid its harshest conditions: indigenous reindeer herders known as Nenets; descendants of former Soviet prisoners; and energy-company men seeking oil and natural gas.