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Sakhalin (Сахали́н, səxʌˈlʲin pron; Japanese: ''Karafuto'' 樺太 or ''Saharin'' サハリン; 庫頁/库页 ''Kùyè'' or 薩哈林/萨哈林 ''Sàhālín''), also Saghalien, is a large elongated island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N. It is part of Russia and is its largest island, administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast. The indigenous peoples of the island are the Sakhalin Ainu, Oroks, and Nivkhs. Most Ainu relocated to Hokkaidō when Japanese were expelled from the island in 1949.

The European names derived from misinterpretation of a Manchu name ''sahaliyan ula angga hada'' (peak of the mouth of Amur River). ''Sahaliyan'' means ''black'' in Manchu and refers to Amur River (''sahaliyan ula''). Its Japanese name, ''Karafuto Prefecture Karafuto'' 樺太 comes from Ainu Kamuy-Kara-Puto-Ya-Mosir (Kara Puto), which means ''God of mouth of water land''. The name was restored to the island by the Japanese during their possession of its southern part (1905-1945).

History

Sakhalin was inhabited in the Neolithic Stone Age. Flint implements, like those found in Siberia, have been found at Dui and Kusunai in great numbers, as well as polished stone hatchets, like European examples, primitive pottery with decorations like those of the Olonets, and stone weights for nets. Afterwards a population to whom bronze was known left traces in earthen walls and kitchen-middens on the Aniva Bay.

Among the indigenous people of Sakhalin are the Ainu on the southern half, the Oroks in the central region, and the Nivkhs on the northern part. Chinese chronicled the Xianbei and Hezhe tribes, who had a way of life based on fishing.

The Mongol Empire did some efforts to subjugate the Guwei (Sakhalin) people from 1280s. By 1308, all inhabitants of Sakhalin had surrendered to the Mongols. They paid tributes to the Great Khans until the end of their regime in China (1368).

The Chinese in the Ming dynasty knew the island as Kuyi , and later as Kuye . There is some evidence that the Ming eunuch admiral Yishiha reached Sakhalin in 1413 during one of his expeditions to the lower Amur, and granted Ming titles to a local chieftain. If that was the case, the island would at least nominally be included under the administration of the Nurgal Command Post, which was set up by Yishiha near today's village of Tyr on the Russian mainland in 1411, and operated until the mid-1430s. Nearly two-thirds of Sakhalin is mountainous. Two parallel ranges of mountains traverse it from north to south, reaching 600–1500 m (2000–5000 ft). The Western Sakhalin Mountains peak in Mount Ichara, 1481 m ft abbr=on 0 , while the Eastern Sakhalin Mountains's highest peak, Mount Lopatin 1609 m ft abbr=on 0, is also the island's highest mountain. Tym-Poronaiskaya Valley separates the two ranges. Susuanaisky and Tonino-Anivsky ranges traverse the island in the south, while the swampy Northern-Sakhalin plain occupies most of its north.

Crystalline rocks crop out at several capes; Cretaceous limestones, containing an abundant and specific fauna of gigantic ammonites, occur at Dui on the west coast, and Tertiary conglomerates, sandstones, marls and clays, folded by subsequent upheavals, in many parts of the island. The clays, which contain layers of good coal and an abundant fossil vegetation, show that during the Miocene period Sakhalin formed part of a continent which comprised north Asia, Alaska and Japan, and enjoyed a comparatively warm climate. The Pliocene deposits contain a mollusc fauna more Arctic than that which exists at the present time, indicating probably that the connection between the Pacific and Arctic Oceans was broader than it is now.

Main rivers: the Tym, 400 km mi abbr=on 0 long and navigable by rafts and light boats for 80 km mi abbr=on 0, flows north and north-east with numerous rapids and shallows, and enters the Sea of Okhotsk. The Poronai River flows south-south-east to the Gulf of Patience or Shichiro Bay, on the south-east coast. Three other small streams enter the wide semicircular Gulf of Aniva or Higashifushimi Bay at the southern extremity of the island.

The northernmost point of Sakhalin is Cape of Elisabeth on Schmidt Peninsula, while Cape Crillon is the southernmost point of the island.

Demographics

At the beginning of the 20th century, some 32,000 Russians (of whom over 22,000 were convicts) inhabited Sakhalin along with several thousand native inhabitants. The island's population has grown to 546,695 according to the 2002 census, 83 percent of whom are ethnic Russians and followed by Koreans at about 30,000 (5.5%), Ukrainians and Tatars. The native inhabitants consist of some 2,000 Nivkhs, 750 Oroks, 200 Evenks and some Yakuts. The Nivkhs in the north support themselves by fishing and hunting.

The capital Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, a city of about 175,000, has a large Korean minority, typically referred to as Sakhalin Koreans, who were forcibly brought by the Japanese during World War II to work in the coal mines. Most of the population lives in the southern half of the island, centered mainly around Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk and two ports, Kholmsk and Korsakov (population about 40,000 each).

The 400,000 Japanese inhabitants of Sakhalin (including all indigenous Ainu) were deported following the conquest of the southern portion of the island by the Soviet Union in 1945 at the end of World War II.

Demographics for 2008

Climate

Owing to the influence of the raw, foggy Sea of Okhotsk, the climate is quite cold, though still considerably less so than inland Siberia. At Dui the average yearly temperature is only 0.5°C (32.9°F) (January -15.9°C [3.4°F]; July 16.1°C [61°F]), 1.7°C (35.1°F) at Kusunai and 3.1°C (37.6°F) at Aniva (January, −12.5°C [9.5°F]; July, 15.7°C [60.3°F]). At Alexandrovsk-Sakhalinsky near Dui the annual range is from 27°C (80.6°F) in July to −39°C (−38.2°F) in January, while at Rykovsk in the interior the minimum is −45°C (−49°F). The rainfall averages 570 mm (22.4 in). Thick clouds for the most part shut out the sun; while the cold current from the Sea of Okhotsk, aided by north-east winds, brings immense ice-floes to the east coast in summer.

Flora and fauna

The whole of the island is covered with dense forests, mostly coniferous. The Yezo (or Yeddo) spruce (''Picea jezoensis''), the Sakhalin Fir (''Abies sachalinsis'') and the Dahurian larch (''Larix gmelinii'') are the chief trees; on the upper parts of the mountains are the Siberian dwarf pine (''Pinus pumila'') and the Kurile bamboo (''Sasa kurilensis''). Birches, both Siberian silver birch (''Betula platyphylla'') and Erman's birch (''B. ermanii''), poplar, elm, Bird cherry (''Prunus padus''), Japanese yew (''Taxus cuspidata'') and several willows are mixed with the conifers; while farther south the maple, rowan and oak, as also the Japanese ''Panax ricinifolium'', the Amur cork tree (''Phellodendron amurense''), the Spindle (''Euonymus macropterus'') and the vine (''Vitis thunbergii'') make their appearance. The underwoods abound in berry-bearing plants (e.g. cloudberry, cranberry, crowberry, red whortleberry), Red-berried elder (''Sambucus racemosa''), wild raspberry and Spiraea.

Bears, foxes, otters and sables are numerous, as are reindeer in the north, and musk deer, hares, squirrels, rats and mice everywhere. The bird fauna is mostly the common east Siberian, but there are some endemic or near-endemic breeding species, notably the endangered Spotted Greenshank (''Tringa guttifer'') and the Sakhalin Leaf Warbler (''Phylloscopus borealoides''). The rivers swarm with fish, especially species of salmon (''Oncorhynchus''). Numerous whales visit the sea coast, including the critically endangered Western Pacific Gray Whale,for which the coast of Sakhalin is the only known feeding ground. Other critically endangered whale species known to occur in this area are the North Pacific Right Whale, the Bowhead Whale and the Beluga Whale.

Transport

Rail

Transport, especially by sea, is an important segment of the economy. Nearly all the cargo arriving for Sakhalin (and the Kuril Islands) is delivered by cargo boats, or by ferries, in railway wagons, through a sea ferry passage at Vanino-Kholmsk. The ports of Korsakov and Kholmsk are the largest and handle all kinds of goods, while coal and timber shipments often go through other ports. In 1999, a ferry service was opened between the ports of Korsakov and Wakkanai, Japan.

About 30% of all inland transport volume is realized through railways. Sakhalin has railway lines stretching from Nogliki in the north to Korsakov in the south. There is also a departmental narrow-gauge line at Nogliki–Okha, extending 228. With the existence of a ferry serving Vanino-Kholmsk, Sakhalin has railway connection with the railway network of the rest of Russia. The railways are only now being converted from the Japanese 1067 gauge to the Russian 1520 gauge. All mainland rolling stock is regauged at Holmsk. The original Japanese D51 steam locomotives were used by the Soviet Railways until 1979.

Air

Sakhalin is connected by regular flights to Moscow, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and other cities of Russia. Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk Airport has regularly scheduled international flights to Hakodate, Japan and Seoul and Busan, Korea. There are also charter flights to the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Niigata, and Sapporo and the Chinese cities of Shanghai, Dalian, and Harbin. The island was formerly served by Alaska Airlines from Anchorage, Petropavlovsk and Magadan.

The idea of building a fixed link between Sakhalin and the Russian mainland was first mooted in the 1930s. In the 1940s, an abortive attempt was made to link the island via a 10 km long undersea tunnel. The workers supposedly made it almost to the half-way pointdate=February 2007 before the project was abandoned under Nikita Khrushchev. In 2000, the Russian government revived the idea, adding a suggestion that a 40 km long bridge could be constructed between Sakhalin and the Japanese island of Hokkaidō, providing Japan with a direct connection to the Euro-Asian railway network. It was claimed that construction work could begin as early as 2001. The idea was received skeptically by the Japanese government and appears to have been shelved, probably permanently, after the cost was estimated at as much as US$50 billion.

In November 2008, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev announced government support for the construction of the Sakhalin Tunnel, along with the required re-gauging of the island's railways to Russian standard gauge, at an estimated cost of 300-330 billion roubles.

Economy

Sakhalin is a classic ''resource economy'' relying on oil and gas exports, coal mining, forestry, and fishing. Limited quantities of rye, wheat, oats, barley and vegetables are grown, although the growing season averages less than 100 days.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and economic liberalization, Sakhalin has experienced an oil boom with extensive petroleum exploration and mining by most large oil Multinational corporations. The oil and natural gas reserves contain an estimated 14 billion barrels (2.2 km³) of oil and 96 trillion cubic feet (2,700 km³) of gas and are being developed under production-sharing agreement contracts involving international oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell.

In 1996, two large consortiums signed contracts to explore for oil and gas off the northeast coast of the island, Sakhalin-I and Sakhalin-II. The two consortia were estimated to spend a combined $21 billion U.S. dollars on the two projects which almost doubled to $37 billion as of September 2006, triggering Russian governmental opposition. This will include an estimated $1 billion (US) to upgrade the island's infrastructure: roads, bridges, waste management sites, airports, railways, communications systems, and ports. In addition, Sakhalin-III-through-VI are in various early stages of development.

The Sakhalin I project, managed by Exxon Neftgas Limited (ENL), completed a production-sharing agreement (PSA) between the Sakhalin I consortium, the Russian Federation, and the Sakhalin government. Russia is in the process of building a 136 mile (219 km) pipeline across the Tatar Strait from Sakhalin Island to De-Kastri on the Russian mainland. From De-Kastri it will be loaded onto tankers for transport to East Asian markets, namely Japan, South Korea, and China.

The second consortium, Sakhalin Energy Investment Company Ltd. (Sakhalin Energy) is managing the Sakhalin II project. They completed the first ever production-sharing agreement (PSA) with the Russian Federation. Sakhalin Energy will build two 800 km pipelines running from the northeast of the island to Prigorodnoye (Prigorodnoe) in Aniva Bay at the southern end. The consortium will also build, at Prigorodnoye, the first ever liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant to be built in Russia. The oil and gas is also bound for East Asian markets.

Sakhalin II has come under fire from environmental groups, namely Sakhalin Environment Watch, for dumping dredging material in Aniva Bay. The groups were also worried about the offshore pipelines interfering with the migration of whales off the island. The consortium has (as of Jan 2006) re-routed the pipeline to avoid the whale migration. After a doubling in the projected cost, the Russian government threatened to halt the project for environmental reasons. There have been suggestions that the Russian government is using the environmental issues as a pretext for obtaining a greater share of revenues from the project and/or forcing involvement by the state-controlled Gazprom. The cost overruns (at least partly due to Shell's response to environmental concerns), are reducing the share of profits flowing to the Russian treasury.

In 2000, the oil and gas industry accounted for 57.5% of Sakhalin's industrial output. By 2006, it is expected to account for 80% of the island's industrial output. Sakhalin's economy is growing rapidly thanks to its oil and gas industry. By 2005, the island had become the largest recipient of foreign investment in Russia, followed by Moscow. Unemployment in 2002 was only 2%.

As of 18 April 2007 Gazprom have taken a 50% plus one share interest in Sakhalin II by purchasing 50% of Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi's shares.

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