Miller allays CNPC fears about delay of Power of Siberia construction, launch is expected in 2019 - source
BEIJING. June 13 (Interfax) - The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) believes the construction of the gas pipeline Power of Siberia will be completed on time by working together and it will be put into operation in 2019, a representative of the CNPC management told Interfax.
"I think we will complete the construction work before the end of 2018 and begin pumping gas in a test mode," the source said.
The source said eighty kilometers of the pipeline will be built on the Chinese side this year.
"We were concerned about the shift of the construction deadlines by the Russian side, but after the meeting between our companies CEOs Alexey Miller and Wang Yilin in Sochi in May we became confident that we will meet the deadlines," the source said.
The source said they had agreed that representatives of the two companies will meet at a high level at least twice a year and discuss the construction
The source said CNPC has recently seen "increased activity of Gazprom and its ambition to develop and deepen cooperation on various tracks."
The directive date for the start of gas supply to China on the Power of Siberia pipeline is May 2019 (plus a two-year option if the infrastructure is not ready).
In 2015, according to the original version of the budget, it was planned to spend 31 billion rubles on the project, but only 19 billion rubles was eventually spent. In 2016, 200 billion rubles is expected to be spent, the actual expenditures being 92 billion rubles. The plan for the construction of the linear part of the pipeline in 2016 has been reduced from 800 to 400 kilometers. "Indeed, we have lowered our forecasts for construction due to optimization of costs, but we're not changing plans to launch capacity in 2018," Vitaly Markelov, Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee, said a month ago.
