Russia, Iran discuss expanding North-South corridor, marine shipments
TEHRAN. May 26 (Interfax) - Russia and Iran are discussing expanding the throughput capacity of the North-South transport corridor and increasing shipments by sea, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said at a meeting between the co-chairmen of the two countries' intergovernmental committee in Tehran.
"Today we also discussed a very important issue that could give us additional opportunities for developing our trade turnover, the development of the North-South international transport corridor. This refers to the development of the western corridor, the eastern corridor and the Caspian route," Novak said.
"We noted that today the volume of shipments amounts to about 15 million tonnes, which in three to five years could grow to 30 million-50 million tonnes of shipments. We agreed that we need to put together a concrete plan of measures that we need to carry out in order to already begin implementing the expansion of the transport and logistics corridor's throughput capacity," Novak said.
"For the eastern route, this is accelerating the implementation of the Garmsar-Inche Burun railway project, which is being financed with a Russian intergovernmental loan. For the western route, we also agreed that it is necessary to carry out the Rasht-Astara project, the construction of a railway section. This will make it possible to eliminate this bottleneck that now prevents us from expanding the volume of shipments," Novak said.
"We also discussed in detail that we need to increase the volume of marine shipments with the expansion of possibilities for using seaports in both Russia and Iran, with the launch of container and ferry services," he said, adding that Russia is prepared to strengthen the presence of its operators at Iranian ports. "We agreed that Russian experts will arrive at four Iranian ports within a month."
"Summing up the results in this area of the expansion of our cooperation, I believe that in the current circumstances it is genuinely becoming one of the key ones that can not only make it possible to ensure supplies of mutual products from Russia to Iran and from Iran to Russia, but also support transit freight coming from the Persian Gulf," Novak said.
Oil production falling
Oil and condensate production in Russia is expected to drop to 480 million-500 million tonnes this year from 524 million tonnes in 2021, Alexander Novak said, commenting on the Economic Development Ministry's forecast.
The main scenario parameters for the macro forecast for 2022-2025 published by the ministry project that oil and condensate production in Russia in the baseline scenario will drop to 475.3 million tonnes in 2022 from 524 million tonnes last year.
"I think that the decrease [in oil production] will be far smaller [than in the ministry's forecast]. We just had one month with a decrease of slightly more than 1 million bpd [in March compared to February], now it's already less and, I think, going forward there will be recovery, so [...] maybe 480 million-500 million tonnes [for the year]. But this is as of today. Everything could change depending on the situation," Novak told reporters.
Sticking with LNG forecast
Russia is not changing the forecast that projects its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production will grow to 140 million tonnes per year by 2035, the Deputy Prime Minister told reporters.
"We are not revising the objective for LNG at this point. We are working on realizing the figures that are factored into our strategy even taking into account that this will be Russian technology. Accordingly, a program has been adopted to develop Russian technologies. I'm confident it will be realized, there's nothing complicated there," Novak said.
After the start of Russia's military operation in Ukraine, the European Union imposed sanctions against investments in the Russian energy sector, including the LNG industry, and later imposed sanctions on supplies of technology and equipment for LNG projects.
Russia currently has one train with capacity of up to 1 million tonnes per year operating at an LNG plant that was built based on Novatek's Arctic Cascade technology.
Support to all sanctions-hit oil, gas processing projects
The Russian government intends to provide support to all projects in the area of oil and gas processing that are already being implemented but are now having problems due to the imposition of western sanctions, Alexander Novak told reporters.
"This is the Amur Gas Chemical Complex, Ust-Luga, foremost those projects that are already being implemented. We will support all processing projects," Novak said, also mentioning Arctic LNG 2. He did not specify what these support measures would entail.
In mid-April, President Vladimir Putin said that the development of intensive processing of oil and gas is one of the strategic objectives of Russia's oil and gas sector and called for "additional support for projects that are in the investment phase, so as to put them into production and do this as quickly as possible."
The European Union has imposed sanctions against supplying Russia with technology and equipment for oil refining and natural gas liquefaction.