Gazprom weighs building a new gas pipeline
Gazprom, the world's largest gas company, is considering constructing a new gas pipeline parallel to the incomplete oil pipeline designed to link Eastern Siberia with the Pacific Coast.The future of the project will depend on the government's plans for developing the Eastern Siberian deposits.
Valery Nesterov, an analyst with the Troika Dialog brokerage, was quoted as saying that the new project would reduce expenses due to lower land allocation and infrastructure costs. Nesterov said the new Gazprom pipeline's future would become clear only after the government approves the Eastern gas program, which stipulates 15 regional deposit-development options.
Gazprom and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry reports three scenarios, according to which the new pipe may run parallel to the Eastern Siberian Oil Pipeline, namely, via Taishet and Skovorodino, and with an offshoot into Yakutia, a republic in northeastern Russia.
According to a local report, the part of the joint gas supply network would run parallel to the Eastern Siberian Oil Pipeline.In 2006, the government of Yakutia offered to build a gas pipeline along the Eastern Siberian pipeline. Officials said deposits in Yakutia could yield at least 35 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually for the next 50 years. The new pipeline could pump 80 billion cubic meters of gas per year, together with Eastern Siberian casing-head gas and feedstock from the Kovykta deposit in the Irkutsk Region.
Yakut officials said the pipeline could also reach into China, and a gas-liquefaction plant could be built on the Pacific Coast for subsequent export operations.Nesterov said Gazprom is lobbying for a route that would include Western Siberian and Sakhalin deposits under the Altai project. Alpha Bank analyst Dmitry Lukashov said the new pipeline would pump gas from the Kovykta and Chayandinskoye deposits in Eastern Siberia and Yakutia. Under the three scenarios, the deposits are to be developed by 2016-2017.
// March. 30, 2007
Resource: Energy Watch |
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