Rosneft lawsuit seeks Sakhalin Energy pipeline capacity; Gazprom named as third party
MOSCOW. July 15 (Interfax) - Rosneft has filed a lawsuit against Sakhalin-2 operator Sakhalin Energy to secure non-discriminatory access to free capacity on Sakhalin-2's trunk gas pipeline, and has the technical ability to supply up to 8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas a year to the pipeline, according to documents from Sakhalin region arbitration court.
Gazprom , the controlling shareholder in Sakhalin Energy, is named as a third party in the lawsuit.
In the lawsuit, Rosneft seeks access to the Sakhalin-2 pipeline from the Lunskoye unified onshore processing facility to a spur leading to the site in Ilyinsky where Rosneft plans to build an LNG plant, which would turn the 8 bcm of gas a year into about 5.8 million tonnes of LNG.
Rosneft submitted a number of requests for pipeline access to Sakhalin Energy: on October 21, 2013, November 14, and February 24, 2014, according to the court documents.
The preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for August 6.
The Sakhalin-2 project involves development of the Piltun-Astokhskoye and Lunskoye fields, located on the Sakhalin shelf with recoverable reserves of 150 million tonnes oil and 500 billion cubic meters gas. The shareholders in Sakhalin Energy are Gazprom (50%), Royal Dutch/Shell (27.5%), and Japanese companies Mitsui (12.5%) and Mitsubishi (10%).
Sakhalin Energy built an 800-kilometer pipeline to supply gas from fields in northern Sakhalin to the LNG plant at the southern end of the island.
Rosneft reached agreement with ExxonMobil last year to build an LNG plant supplied with gas from the Sakhalin-1 project.
Gazprom Deputy CEO Alexander Medvedev said earlier that expansion of Sakhalin-2's LNG plant would leave the pipeline with no free capacity. "The FEED stage is being completed, and in the event the final investment decision is approved at the end of 2015, there will no longer by any grounds for discussion," he said, adding that the Sakhalin-2 LNG plant has room for another two lines in addition to the existing two lines.
Gazprom has attempted in the past to secure gas from Sakhalin-1, which is currently injected back into the reservoir, but has never been able to reach agreement on price.