OREANDA-NEWS. February 22, 2008. Even before construction of onshore facilities under the Sakhalin II Phase 2 Project started, the Company had committed to develop a Plan of Treatment of Objects of Cultural Heritage.

Archeological excavations covering 3,500 m2 were carried out at the request of Sakhalin Energy at 10 ancient settlements situated near or on the right of way of Sakhalin II’s onshore pipeline from 2004-2007. Some 30,000 findings were collected and handed over to the state.

Many (archeological) findings are sensational

Systematic researches, around the areas of onshore pipeline construction and other construction sites, have been completed by the Laboratory of Archeology and Ethnography of Sakhalin State University together with specialists from the Sakhalin Regional Museum of Local History, Moscow, Khabarovsk, and Novosibirsk.

Working for Sakhalin Energy, Sakhalin archeologists can also carry out integrated interdisciplinary researches. For example, there are opportunities to take samples of peat study remains of ancient plants and dust and to get radiocarbon dating based on deep sampling of peat during pipe laying. This enables archeologists to understand the environment of ancient people and their surroundings – whether they lived near forest, fenland or moor. The abundance of archeological sites on the shores of Sakhalin’s northern bays is thus explained by the warm climate and rich flora and fauna of 5-3 millennia B.C., when oaks and elms grew together with spruces and birches near Okha and Nogliki.

Archeological excavations on Sakhalin’s northern sites significantly expanded the archeologists' views about the origin of ancient cultures of the island, their interrelations, spread and times. It is already an established fact that Sakhalin has always been closely connected with the ethnic and historical cultures of the Mainland and Japan.

In order to save objects of cultural heritage, Sakhalin Energy re-routed onshore pipelines, changed access road directions, relocated construction sites, applied horizontal drilling methods, narrowed the right of way and made local re-routings to bypass the most significant archeological and historical monuments.

Archeological and paleontological findings were discovered during monitoring of the LNG plant construction site, and a number of items were collected relating to the times of Karafuto governance (1905 – 1945) and the exploration of the southern part of the island during Soviet times after World War II (1945 – 1960s).

These findings were handed over to the Sakhalin Regional Museum to display in a new archeological museum to be opened at the Sakhalin State University.

Professor Vasilevskiy, Head of the General History Department of Sakhalin State University and sponsor of the new museum, says that many of these findings are sensational. Tools, used by ancient people and found at the Sennaya site in the Dolinsk district, are among the items. These tools are some 140,000-230,000 years old. This means that Sakhalin was a region of habitation of the most ancient of human ancestors, presumably, Sinanthropa.

Who knows how long it would have taken for Sakhalin archeologists to obtain this knowledge if it were not for the works under the Sakhalin II Project.