Officials of Russia’s Gazprom have indicated they soon will issue a decision to accelerate work on the long-discussed Eastern Gas Program, a system of natural gas developments in Eastern Siberia and pipelines accommodating local consumption and exports to China and elsewhere in Asia.
At a meeting in Moscow, Alexey Miller, chairman of Gazprom’s management committee, and Yegor Borisov, president of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), discussed construction of a production center at Yakutia, which would be based on gas from Chayandinskoye gas and condensate field in the Lensk District of Yakutia.
A Gazprom statement said the company had “completed the investment rationale for the Chayandinskoye field predevelopment, gas transmission, and processing.” It said the document is “being prepared for consideration.”
Russia’s energy ministry approved the Eastern Gas Program in 2007 (OGJ Online, Sept. 11, 2007). Linked with the Sakhalin projects in the Far East, the program also envisions development of large gas reserves in the Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye, Sobinsko-Paiginskoye, and Kovytinskoye areas. In addition to Yakutia and Sakhalin, the program calls for the synchronized construction of production centers in Krasnoyarsk and Kamchatka Krais and Irkutsk Oblast.
Gazprom reports gas reserves, including preliminary estimates, at Chayandinskoye field at 1.3 trillion cu m with 79.1 million tonnes of oil and condensate. It projects field production at 25 billion cu m/year, starting with oil in 2014 and gas in 2016, when processing and chemical facilities are in place.
Gazprom plans to lay a pipeline between Yakutia and a tie-in at Khabarovsk to the Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok transmission system (OGJ Online, Aug. 6, 2012).