Russia votes for competitive LNG export projects
On December 1st 2013, Russia enforced the new regulation to allow Gazprom Russian competitors such as Rosneft and Novatek to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia.
Until then, this export licence was concentrated in the exclusive rights attributed to Gazprom.
But the Stokman experience, the legal pursuits of the European Community over Gazprom monopole status, and the challenge to design, manage and build series of LNG projects in Russia motivated President Putin to revise this Gazprom historical status and give a chance to all Russian key players to develop conventional and unconventional resources.
In 2012, Russia lost its pole position of gas producer against USA boosted by the shale gas.
For President Putin, this change is not only symbolic, it reflects the real threats for Russia to loose its natural export markets in Europe and Asia in the same time as a severe depreciation of the market prices even covered with long term contracts.
In this context, Russia made in 2013 major decisions while publishing a new regulation.
Rosneft, Gazprom and Novatek invited foreign companies for partnership to new upstream projects.
Pipelines projects were redesigned to transport oil and gas from west to east supported by a strategic alliance between Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC or PetroChina) to finalize transfer prices and managed the infrastructures to export natural gas from Russia to China.
In addition to this upstream and midstream projects, Russia is now working on the development of it petrochemical sector in beginning with new refineries.
Gazprom awards Omsk Hydrocracker FEED to CB&I
The Russian giant JSC Gazprom Neft (Gazprom) is planning to revamp and upgrade its existing Omsk refinery in Western Siberia, Russia.
Gazprom and Sibur ink MOU for Belogorsk project
The Russian companies Gazprom and Sibur materialized in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) their intention to build a gas processing plant (GPP) and a petrochemical complex at Belogorsk in the Amur Region of the Far East Russia.
CB&I and Foster Wheeler in competitive pre-FEED
Rosneft from Russia and ExxonMobil from USA haveawarded contracts to the engineering companies CB&I and Foster Wheeler Energy from USA to perform the first phase of the front end engineering and design (pre-FEED) for their joined project of liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Sakhalin Island.
Novatek-Total-CNPC did final decision on Yamal LNG
The Russian Novatek and the international oil company (IOC) Total from France made the final investment decision (FID) on their joint venture JSC Yamal LNG.
Technip from France and JGC from Japan to build the liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant of their Yamal project.
