Sakhalin

Just returned from Sakhalin, an island off the eastern coast of Russia.   

Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk

The island is much closer to Japan than any metropolitan area of Russia.


It was quite a trip to get there via CLT then LAX and ICN airports before flying SAT airlines to UUS (Yuzhno-Sakalinsk).  Altogether about 27 hours of travel.  Still, getting there was easier than getting a Russian visa (one question on the form was list all the countries you have visited in the last 10 years and the dates of the visit!).  We didn't visit the oil fields which are another 14 hours away by train.


With summer upon us in North Carolina (we skipped winter this year), it was strange to see 1-2 meters of snow everywhere.

Burney in Sakhalin

Larry Peacock with AppSmiths and I were teaching a gas lift course in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk.  Good to be teaching again!  We also had time to help the folks there who were having to live with some very bad gas lift mandrel spacings (top mandrel much too deep for their 70 bar injection pressure) left as a legacy of another company.  They had some large tubing so will be able to install a very robust straddle packer arrangement upon which to mount a gas lift station from which to gas lift these wells with the bad spacing.


We also had time to enjoy some Russian food. Sakhalinsk is a very international city due to the wide variety of expats that work there, so finding actual Russian food was not that easy.  We did find one place.

Russian Baroque, a restaurant near an indoor golf center

The food was very good--I had a bowl of borscht and some fresh salmon.  They told me that to catch a salmon there, you throw an unbaited hook into the stream and pull, snagging a salmon.  Apparently you will catch all you want before your arm gets too tired.


We left in the beginning of a snow storm.  But, no one was too concerned about a little more snow.  Summer starts there in July and ends in August with Spring and Fall adding a couple more months of non-winter.