MOSCOW, May 14. /TASS/. Natural hydrocarbon storages may be created in perennially frozen soils in the Russian Federation's Arctic, Alexander Vorotnikov, Associate Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation (RANEPA), and coordinator of the Center for Development of the Arctic (PORA), said.
"We are speaking about underground reservoirs of various significance, including those to store strategic oil and gas reserves, or other products," he said.
This way, the scientist continued, the country could solve problems of long-term and short-term fuel storage for the Northern Supplies program, as well as to make export reserves. The Academy of Sciences' Melnikov Permafrost Institute, he said, has tested storage facilities of the kind. "One of the storages has been keeping diesel fuel for 45 years. Having analyzed the stored diesel fuel after 25 years of its storage in an underground tank with minor seasonal temperature fluctuations, scientists found the fuel met all necessary requirements," he told TASS, adding in underground storages in perennially frozen soils the stable negative temperatures of surrounding soils reduce and even prevent products' evaporation thus reducing losses, environmental pollution and increasing the storages' safe operation.