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FSUOGM
NEWS IN BRIEF
FSUOGM
R U S S I A
Russia’s LNG runner-up
Novatek to miss budget
funds
Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer and global liquefied natural gas (LNG) runner-up Novatek will not receive federal budget support for transportation of LNG via the Northern Sea Route for 2020, Kommersant daily reported on November 25 citing unnamed sources close to the government.
As reported by bne IntelliNews, Novatek is currently the largest shipper on the Arctic route and its LNG expansion strategy largely depends on transportation investment and infrastructure to match it.
Reportedly, Novatek requested RUB124bn ($2bn) for the federal infrastructure, such as LNG handling terminals in Kamchatka and Murmansk, as well as Utrennny terminal,
but has not been included in the 2020 federal budget draft. The only funding planned is RUB41bn in 2022.
The main shareholder of Novatek and Russia’s richest man according to Forbes Leonid Mikhelson reportedly pleaded directly to President Vladimir Putin in November, arguing that lack of state support puts the second LNG project Arctic LNG-2 at risk.
Kommersant reminds that previously
the Kamchatka LNG terminal also failed to receive RUB20bn despite Mikhelson’s requests.
Novatek has set its sights of producing
as much as 70mn tpy of LNG by 2030, underpinning Russia’s ambition to become a top-tier global LNG supplier. It has acquired a number of new gas fields in recent years on Gydan and the Yamal peninsula to build up a resource base to support its new projects.
Resolving the logistics issues of LNG delivery is seen as crucial for Novatek to catch up with adding LNG output. Analysts told Vedomosti daily previously that about 30 tankers and the accompanying infrastructure would be enough to handle all the LNG, which will be produced at Novatek’s operating Yamal LNG and planned Arctic LNG-2.
BNE INTELLINEWS, November 26, 2019
Putin says humanity
will end up in caves if it
abandons hydrocarbons
If humanity completely abandons hydrocarbons in the energy sector it will
“end up in caves”, Russian President Vladimir Putin told delegates at the VTB Russia Calling investment summit on November 20, as took at swing at most forms of alternative energy, as cited by Kommersant.
The Russian energy balance is one of the greenest in the world due to the use
of hydropower, nuclear energy and gas generation, Putin added, before going on to extol the value of traditional forms of fossil fuels.
“Neglect of such a pure hydrocarbon as gas, in my opinion, is absolutely strange. When promoting ideas of [of the complete rejection of hydrocarbons] it seems to me that humanity can again find itself in caves, but only because it will not consume anything.
If this is how all energy can be reduced to
zero or just rely on the energy of the sun or wind, or tides, then, you know ... Today the technology is such that without hydrocarbon raw materials, without nuclear energy, without hydropower, mankind will not be able to survive, save his civilisation,” Putin said in his tradition keynote session at the annual event.
However, Putin conceded that it was necessary to develop renewable energy sources that, “will preserve nature for many millennia ahead for future generations.”
Russia ratified the Paris Climate accords in September and has begun introducing a comprehensive sustainable energy strategy, but the programme announced in October has been seriously watered down by the business lobby.
Putin went on to lambast modern methods of producing shale oil and gas, calling them “barbaric”.
“As for shale oil, let us wait for the Americans to spend money on new technologies for the production of shale oil, and then they have a scratch prong — let’s see
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Week 47 27•November•2019