Page 10 - FSUOGM Week 49 2021

FSUOGM PIPELINES & TRANSPORT FSUOGM

Novatek eyes new Asian opportunities

RUSSIA RUSSIA’S Novatek has signed two deals to Southeast Asian nation.
expand its inroads into the Asian natural gas “Parties to the agreement intend to co-oper-
The deliveries are market. ate on LNG infrastructure projects with the view
scheduled to start in The operator of the Yamal LNG terminal to meeting the growing demand for electricity in
2024 to China. in the Russian Arctic on November 30 signed Vietnam,” Novatek said.
an agreement with Japan’s Saibu Gas on LNG Vietnam has plans for a number of LNG-to-
transshipment and supply to the Chinese city power projects to keep up with growing domes-
gas company Zhejiang Hangjiaxin Clean Energy tic power demand and facilitate the phase-out of
Co. Under the deal, Novatek will deliver the LNG coal-fired power. But it has had difficulty getting
to Saibu’s Hibiki LNG terminal in Japan. The gas these projects off the ground because of regula-
will then be taken by Zhejiang Hangjiaxi and tory uncertainty and insufficiently favourable
sent to the Jiaxing LNG terminal it is building investment conditions.
in China. Novatek made its interest in the Vietnamese
The deliveries are scheduled to start in 2024, LNG market known in August, when it opened
coinciding with the launch of Novatek’s second an office in Hanoi. Establishing a presence in
liquefaction terminal Arctic LNG-2. The gas will newly emerging LNG markets in Asia will be
be delivered on board medium-sized LNG carri- key for the company to realise its growth plans,
ers, Saibu Gas said, without disclosing details on which call for the development of up to 70mn
volumes and prices. tonnes per year (tpy) of LNG by the end of the
Novatek is developing its own transhipment decade. Here it will face competition from
terminal to facilitate deliveries to Asia on Russia’s other major exporters in Australia, Qatar and
Far East peninsula of Kamchatka. the US.
The company is meanwhile looking to corner “Vietnam’s electricity consumption has been
a share of the nascent LNG market in Vietnam. growing at an average annual rate of 10% over
It signed a co-operation agreement on Decem- the past 10 years, and Novatek is ready to meet
ber 2 with Vietnam’s PetroVietnam on devel- this growing market’s needs,” Novatek CEO
oping potential LNG and power projects in the Leonid Mikhelson said in a statement. ™

POLICY

Moldovan authorities to audit Moldovagaz

and entire gas sector

MOLDOVA LAWMAKERS from Moldova’s ruling Action ceded control over Moldovagaz to Gazprom in the
and Solidarity (PAS) party have drafted a bill past as a way of settling unpaid gas bills.
The audit report will that envisages that an external public audit will This audit has nothing to do with the audit of
focus on operational be carried out by the Court of Accounts for each the claims still held by Gazprom against Moldo-
and capital spending. entity in the national natural gas sector. vagaz, Marian stressed.
The audit report will focus on identifying Moldovagaz, Gazprom and the Moldovan
expenditures and capital investments that are government sealed a memorandum in Octo-
used as legal ground for setting the fees and the ber on settling the historic debt resulting from
end-user prices. It should be completed by Octo- bills not paid by Moldovagaz to Gazprom and
ber 31, 2022. estimated by the former at above $700mn, out of
The report will be carried out with the pur- which around $400 is the principal.
pose of making sure that entities’ activity and The debt was generated by Moldovagaz sell-
financial transactions comply with the regula- ing natural gas to the population and companies
tions in force and the findings will be released at a regulated price. The audit requested by the
to all interested parties and to the relevant public PAS MPs in the bill submitted to parliament
authorities, said MP Radu Marian of PAS, one of could in principle establish whether the failure
the authors of the bill. to pay the debt was caused by the low regulated
There are not many such entities and the biggest end-user prices (and therefore fall under the cat-
one is Moldovagaz, the operator of the country’s egory of financial deviations that the company is
transport and distribution systems and the sole sup- entitled to claim from end-users) or was partly a
plier most of the time. The Moldovan authorities result of fraud.™

P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 49 08•December•2021