Building of NAA first auto road to be finalized in 2014.

ARKHANGELSK, October 12 (Itar-Tass) - The building of the first
automobile road, which is to link the Nenets Autonomous Area (NAA) with
other regions of the country, is to be completed in 2014. The route
stretches from Naryan-Mar, the center of NAA, to the town of Usinsk, the
oil capital of the Komi Republic. It remains to finalize the building of
only 83 kilometres out of the 386-km road.
The Naryan-Mar - Usinsk road is a highly important land transport
infrastructure facility for the development of the Arctic zone of Russia.
This vast territory encompasses fully or partially the Republic of
Yakutia, Murmansk and Arkhandgelsk Regions, Krasnoyarsk Territory, the
Nenets, Yamalo-Nenets, and Chukotka Autonomous Areas, as well as lands and
islands in the Arctic Ocean and the continental shelf of the Russian
Federation. It accounts for 12-15 percent of Russia's gross domestic
product and for about one-quarter of exports.
The Arctic zone accounts for more than 80 percent of Russian gas
production, a considerable amount of diamonds, 100 percent of antimony,
apatite, phlogopite (a magnesium mica), vermiculite, barytes, rare metals,
over 95 percent of metals of platinum group, over 90 percent of nickel and
cobalt, 60 percent of copper, over one-third of the entire amount of fish
and marine products of Russia.
The NAA territory affords the Timano-Pechora oil and gas province
where a large-scale raw materials base for the gas industry has been
established.
At the same time, NAA is Russia's only region which lacks a permanent
overland transportation link with other regions. It does not have
available either a railway or automobile transport. Contact with other
cities of Russia is maintained either by air or by water -- during a short
summer navigation. In winter, snow-covered trails are the only pathways in
NAA.