To Russia with love: Alaska companies are helping Russians develop pipeline and other infrastructure necessary for their oil boom, predicted to be much like Alaska's in the 1970s.

• Author: Bradner, Mike
• Position: New 44,000-square-foot school

Arctic Structures LLC of Anchorage built this new 44,000-square-foot school in Kurilsk, on Iturup Island in the Kurile Islands of the Russian Far East.

Alaskans working in Sakhalin, in Russia's Far East, say that what's happening there is like Alaska in 1974, on the cusp of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline construction boom.

Sakhalin's oil boom is getting under way in earnest. "They're just on the front edge of it," says Bill Stillings, who runs World Environmental Services Technologies, or WEST, an Alaska company providing environmental services on Sakhalin.

Next year at this time Sakhalin's boom will be in full bloom, and several Alaska-based firms that have invested time and money in establishing business relations there may be in on the ground floor.

Sakhalin's boom may in fact be bigger than Alaska's 1970s oil boom because two multibillion-dollar megaprojects will be under construction at the same time, and other projects may follow shortly.

It may last longer, too. Alaska firms now working in Sakhalin see at least 10 years of development work ahead.

What's launched now includes a large oil and gas project, a consortium led by Exxon Mobil Corp. in the Sakhalin I project, and a gas and liquefied natural gas export project by a second consortium led by Royal Dutch Shell, in the Sakhalin II project.

Both projects involve construction of long-distance pipelines, shore terminals, oil and gas processing facilities and lots of drilling.

On Sakhalin, the major oil and gas fields are off the northern shore of the island, while the major city on the island, Yuzhno-Sahalinsk, and most of the existing transportation infrastructure is in the south.

The She-led group, in Sakhalin II, plans to invest $10 billion and is already producing oil seasonally from an offshore production platform. The consortium will produce oil year-round when pipelines to shore and to an offshore loading terminal to be built on the Russian mainland are constructed.

The big project for Sakhalin II is the construction of a 350-mile pipeline from the gas fields off the island's northern coast to the site of a LNG plant at a port on Sakhalin's southern coast.

The consortium recently signed contracts with Japanese utilities to buy the LNG, and there are hopes some Sakhalin LNG will also be sold in California. One of the consortium partners, Japanese-owned Mitsubishi Corp., is planning a LNG regasification plant at the Port of Long Beach, near Los Angeles. Another partner, besides Misubishi, is Mitsui & Co., a major Japanese trading company.

The immediate plan by Exxon Mobil is for Sakhalin I to be producing oil in 2006, but the major goat is to build long distance pipelines to northern Japan, the Russian mainland and possibly China.

Partners in Sakhalin I include Exxon Neftgas Ltd.; two Russian companies, Rosneft Astra and SMNGShelf; ONGC Videsh of India; and Sodeco, a Japanese company. The consortium anticipated investing $12 billion in Sakhalin 1.

Meanwhile, exploration is...