Gazprom leaders in a board meeting this week officially stated that the Shtokman project remains on the company agenda. However, sources near the company at the same time admit that the Shtokman field is being abandoned and that the giant project will be only “for future generations”. Instead, the company is looking at fields in far eastern waters, and first of all the Yuzhno-Kirinskoye field, from where it will be able to provide LNG to nearby Asian markets, newspaper Kommersant reports.
In addition, the company appears to be reviving plans for a LNG plant on the coast of the Baltic Sea.
Gazprom President Aleksey Miller recently confirmed that “a principally new LNG project” is under planning and company deputy Aleksandr Medvedev followed up saying that the project will be located in the European part of Russia. Then, this week, the Leningrad Oblast administration confirmed that it would sign a cooperation deal with Gazprom about a Baltic LNG plant, Vedomosti reports.
Gazprom already in 2004 started working with plans for a LNG plant in the Baltics. However, then, the Shtokman project was given priority. Now the order of affairs might be shifting back.
A new LNG plant near Vyborg on the Baltic Sea coast will not have any lack of raw materials. Several of Gazprom’s key pipelines lead large quatities of gas towards the area, and out shipments are also not expected to pose any major challenges.
However, as noted by Vedomosti, Gazprom might ultimately end up competing with itself if it decides to build the LNG plant. After all, the company currently sells most of its gas from pipelines and with a LNG plant in full swing the market for pipeline gas is likely to dwindle.
Meanwhile, friends of the Shtokman project are about to come to terms with the change of plans. In Murmansk, regional Governor Marina Kovtun this week admitted that her region still is suffering from a “post-Shtokman syndrome” and that locals long have “not been able to free themselves from this idea, this dream, this religion”. The governor called on her people to overcome the Shtokman project, saying that “our region remains a strategic spot on the map of Russia” and that “we have unique competitive advantages”, a press release reads.
