Regional LNG: Russia Gazprom, Japanese firms in talks over LNG marketing
Saturday, June 28 2003 - 12:33 AM WIB
Gazprom, the world's largest gas producer supplying Europe with a quarter of its needs in natural gas via major pipelines, said the experience of two Japanese firms could help it develop the new strategic LNG branch of its business.
Gazprom said earlier U.S. ConocoPhillips had offered to join its plan to build a $10-billion LNG plant in the Arctic port of Murmansk targeting markets in Europe and the United States.
Gazprom is studying LNG projects as it seeks cheaper ways to develop huge Arctic gas deposits. The Murmansk plant would liquefy gas from the giant Shtokman field in the Barents Sea.
Gazprom says expensive as it is an LNG plant could be much cheaper than building thousands of miles of pipelines to Europe from huge but untapped fields in the Arctic Yamal peninsula.
The gas giant annually supplies Europe with 130 bcm of gas, shipped from western Siberia to the West through an extensive pipeline network built by the Soviet Union.
Russia has never produced LNG and the only advanced project on its territory is led by Royal Dutch/Shell-led, which wants to build the world's largest LNG plant by 2006 on Russia's remote island of Sakhalin near Japan.
The consortium also includes Mitsui and Gazprom said last year it was considering joining the project. (*)