Novatek to sell gas pipeline for Murmansk LNG to Gazprom after building it - paper

MOSCOW. Oct 12 (Interfax) - The arrangement for the construction of the trunk gas pipeline to Novatek's future Murmansk LNG project calls for the liquefied natural gas producer to build the 1,300-km pipeline and then sell it to Gazprom .

The pipeline will be sold to Gazprom on an instalment plan and Novatek will pay the state gas giant for transporting gas through it, national daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.

This will make it possible to carry out the project without Gazprom investments and without breaching the state company's monopoly on ownership of trunk gas pipelines, the paper said.

Novatek CEO Leonid Mikhelson said on Wednesday that his company has been tasked with building the Volkhov-Murmansk pipeline. In line with a government decision, the design capacity of the pipeline will be 40 billion cubic meters per year, with 30 bcm going to the future Murmansk LNG plant.

Novatek is considering building a new large-scale LNG plant in Murmansk consisting of three trains with capacity of 6.8 million tonnes each, the first two of which would be launched at the end of 2027 and the third at the end of 2029. Murmansk LNG would get its gas from Novatek's fields in the southern part of the Gydan Peninsula.

In order to launch the first two trains in 2027, Novatek will need at least 22 bcm of gas, not including gas that might be needed for the gasification of regions in this part of Russia.