Gazprom begins negotiating LNG sales from Vladivostok plant
AMSTERDAM. May 31 (Interfax) - Gazprom has begun contract negotiations for to sell liquefied natural gas (LNG) produced at the future Vladivostok LNG plant, the deputy chairman of the Gazprom management board, Andrei Kruglov, said during a session of the European Business Congress.
"We have already started commercial negotiations with this project's consumers. Furthermore, we are considering the possibility of expanding LNG production on Sakhalin," Kruglov said.
Gazprom's management board approved an investment rationale for the LNG plant in February. The project involves building an LNG plant with three trains, capacity 5 million tonnes of LNG per year, in the Perevoznaya Bay on the Lomonosov Peninsula.
The gas will be sourced in the Sakhalin, Yakutia and Irkutsk gas production centers, and the LNG will be sold to Asia-Pacific region countries.
A gas pipeline from Sakhalin Island with capacity of 6 billion cubic meters per year, the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok line, has already been built near the city and there are plans to expand it to 30 bcm. There are also plans to build the Power of Siberia pipeline to Vladivostok, which will initially carry gas from the Chayanda field in Yakutia and later gas from the Kovykta field in the Irkutsk region.
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller has held negotiations with the chairman of China's CNPC, Jiang Jiemin, on supplies of both pipeline and liquefied gas under the Vladivostok LNG project.
Gazprom may offer its foreign partners a stake of up to 50% in the project, the company's deputy CEO, Vitaly Markelov, said in May.
Local environmentalists claim an LNG plant would cause irreversible damage to the Khasan district's unique wildlife and suggest building it elsewhere.