Russian Arctic tribe at risk from Yamal gas projects

By Amie Ferris-Rotman

67 N LATITUDE, 71 E LONGITUDE, Russia (Reuters) - The Nenets tribespeople of Russia's frozen Yamal peninsula have survived the age of the Tsars, the Bolshevik revolution and the chaotic 1990s, but now confront their biggest challenge -- under their fur-bundled feet is enough gas to heat the world for five years.

"For them it is fortune, for us terror," said 20-year-old herder Andrei Yezgini, dressed from head to toe in reindeer skin, referring to ambitious plans by state gas giant Gazprom to drill the region Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has described as "the world's storehouse" of gas and oil.

Putin jetted into the sparsely populated region within the Arctic circle, 2,000 km (1,250 miles) northeast of Moscow, in late September to woo foreign partners to develop a quarter of the world's known gas reserves.

Experts and the Nenets say industry will damage and pollute the tundra, whose flat marshy terrain switches from marigold russets in summer to thick winter snow and is peppered with disc-like thermokarst lakes and crystal blue waterways.

Nenets migrate north to south over 150 km every year, spending only a few days in one place, living off reindeer and fish and lugging their "chums," or tents, kerosene lamps and wood-fired stoves on reindeer-pulled sleighs.

"The fact they've found deposits here is catastrophic," said Slava Vanuito, 34, his Asiatic eyes narrowing as a gust of Arctic wind sweeps over a tundra bouncy from the thick carpet of springy moss that feeds the reindeer.

Like many young Nenets men, Vanuito served in the Russian army -- he fought against Chechens in the first separatist war -- and decided to return to his nomadic life in Yamal, which means "world's end" in Nenets, a distant relative of Finnish.

Numbering around 42,000, the Nenets are entirely dependent on reindeer, which appear on the Yamal region's crest, and are animists. Their strict code of superstitions and gender divisions has been virtually untouched for at least a millennium.