Transneft: better to start up Kuyumba-Taishet pipeline than to collect compensation payments
MOSCOW. April 9 (Interfax) - Russian oil pipeline operator Transneft is more interested in pumping early oil on new pipelines rather than in receiving compensation from the oil companies for the cost of maintaining empty pipelines, First Vice President Maxim Grishanin said.
The oil companies must compensate Transneft for those expenses under a government resolution, he said.
Talks are currently underway with Rosneft to utilize capacity on the Kuyumba-Taishet, which is now under construction. "We don't want to mothball Kuyumba-Taishet but to begin pumping oil, even very small volumes. We are planning a meeting with the colleagues at the end of April," he said.
Transneft plans to commission the Kuyumba-Taishet pipeline in 2016 in order to supply oil from new fields in Eastern Siberia to the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO). Rosneft and Slavneft have significantly reduced anticipated deliveries of oil from the Kuyumbinskoye and Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye fields to Kuyumba-Taishet, so that capacity utilization will be just 50% by 2020. Under the initial planned volumes that Transneft relied on in designing the project, oil deliveries to the pipeline were supposed to total 9.5 million tonnes in 2017; that figure is now just 1.1 million tonnes. The oil companies do not plan to reach the peak planned volume of 11.6 million tonnes until 2025. The pipeline will cost 135 billion rubles to build.
Transneft has not ruled out moving back the pipeline construction schedule - and incurring mothballing expenses - to conform with changes to the oil companies' plans to develop the fields that will supply it.
