Nordvik was a harbor

Harbor

A harbor or harbour , or haven, is a place where ships, boats, and barges can seek shelter from stormy weather, or else are stored for future use. Harbors can be natural or artificial...

-port

Port

A port is a location on a coast or shore containing one or more harbors where ships can dock and transfer people or cargo to or from land....

 in the Khatanga Gulf

Khatanga Gulf

The Khatanga Gulf or Khatanga Bay is a large tidal estuary in the Laptev Sea. It is relatively narrow, its length being 220 km with a maximum width of 54 km....

 (Laptev Sea

Laptev Sea

The Laptev Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands. Its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with co-ordinates of 79°N and 139°E, and ends at the Anisiy...

) at the mouth of the Khatanga River

Khatanga River

The Khatanga River is a river in Krasnoyarsk Krai in Russia. It begins at the confluence of the rivers Kotuy and Kheta. The Khatanga River is long; the area of its basin is 364,000 km². It flows into the Khatanga Gulf of the Laptev Sea, forming an estuary...

. It was located on the Uryung Tumus Peninsula, west of a bay called Nordvik Bay

Nordvik Bay

Nordvik Bay is a gulf in the Laptev Sea. Lat 73° 45' and long 112°. It is located Southeast of the mouth of the Khatanga Gulf, between two small peninsulas. The landspit in the west is the Uryung Tumus Peninsula, where there was formerly a village called Nordvik and an infamous penal colony that...

 (Бухта Нордвик; Bukhta Nordvik). Formerly there was a small town and a penal colony next to the harbour, called Nordvik. The climate is exceptionally severe, with prolonged, bitter winters.

Near Nordvik there is a paleozoic

Paleozoic

The Paleozoic era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon, spanning from roughly...

 salt dome known as Tus-Takh on the Uryung Tumus Peninsula itself. It was suspected that the ground underneath would probably yield oil and gas. The remains of a plesiosaur

Plesiosaur

Plesiosauroidea is an extinct clade of carnivorous plesiosaur marine reptiles. Plesiosauroids, are known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods...

 (Plesiosaurus robustus) were also found on this peninsula.

History

In 1933 the newly-formed Glavsevmorput

Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route

The Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route , also known as Glavsevmorput, was a Soviet government organization in charge of the naval Northern Sea Route, established in January 1932 and dissolved in 1964.-History:The organization traces its roots to AO Komseveroput, a shipping company...

(Chief Directorate of the Northern Sea Route

Northern Sea Route

The Northern Sea Route is a shipping lane officially defined by Russian legislation from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean specifically running along the Russian Arctic coast from Murmansk on the Barents Sea, along Siberia, to the Bering Strait and Far East. The entire route lies in Arctic...

) sent the freighter Pravda

Steamer Pravda

Steamer Pravda was a Soviet merchant freighter of about 3,100 tonnes displacement, which was active in the Soviet Arctic during the 1930s. This ship had been normally used for carrying timber. It was named after Soviet newspaper Pravda....

 to Nordvik with an oil exploration

Oil exploration

Hydrocarbon exploration is the search by petroleum geologists and geophysicists for hydrocarbon deposits beneath the Earth's surface, such as oil and natural gas...

 expedition led by N.N. Urvantsev

Nikolay Urvantsev

Nikolay Nikolayevich Urvantsev was a Soviet geologist and explorer. He was born in the town of Lukoyanov of Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, Russian Empire to the family of a merchant...

. By September 4 Pravda was close to Nordvik. Kapitan Belitskiy had decided to approach Nordvik Bay from the east, between Poluostrov Paksa and Bolshoy Begichev Island. Despite having no knowledge of the depth of the channel, Belitskiy went ahead without taking the elementary precaution of sounding

Sounding line

A sounding line or lead line is a length of thin rope with a plummet, generally of lead, at its end. Regardless of the actual composition of the plummet, it is still called a "lead."...

, and Pravda twice ran aground in the center of the channel.

According to Urvantsev, drilling at Nordvik over the next few seasons revealed small, shallow oil pockets in connection with salt structures with little commercial significance. However the salt itself was extracted on a fairly massive scale by means of forced labourers in a penal colony. From the 1930s onwards Nordvik became an important source of salt supply for the northern fisheries. Although the original prospects for oil at Nordvik did not materialize, experience was gained in the exploration for hydrocarbons within the continuous permafrost zones. This experience proved invaluable in the later exploration and exploitation of the massive oil and gas fields of Western Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

.

The penal colony closed in mid 1940's when Americans arrived in Nordvik as allies of the USSR. The salt was extracted by internal deportees rather than prisoners after the camp closure.
The settlement at Nordvik was closed in 1956.